


The Cripple

by LiteratureWork



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: AU, Creepy, Edward and Alphonse children, Kids, Parental Riza/ed, Parental Royed - Freeform, Pennhurst Asylum
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-03-10 09:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 59,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13499420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiteratureWork/pseuds/LiteratureWork
Summary: Roy, after missing a deadline, is sent on a health inspection with Maes Hughes.  There is a creepy air to the New Heissgart Village, a small community for the physically and mentally disabled, but he cannot place it. There he meets a young, golden-haired patient who helps him find the horrifying truth of the Village.





	1. The Inspection

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a remake from the version on Fanfiction.net . It was originally based on the treatment of people and specifically children at asylums such as Pennhurst. It is cruel and horrifying what happened to many of the patients there because of a physical or mental disability. The patients were treated like animals and were practically tortured for their treatments. Proper medicine at the time was either not properly researched or the resources and funds were too low for proper care. Many asylums or schools such as this were overcrowded, understaffed, and did not have the correct equipment for many of the procedures they performed there. Sadly, many of the patients were dropped off at the doors to be forgotten by society.   
> Though I tried to tone the history down for the story, this is just a small insight into the life at Pennhurst and other old treatment facilities.

**_The Cripple_ **

Chapter One

The Inspection

“A health inspection?” Roy asked as he flipped through the file on his desk. It was terribly thin and old as if no one even bothered to update its contents in ages. Most of it was composed of pictures of the buildings he was supposed to inspect, but only the outside he had noticed. Only a couple papers from previous inspections were clipped within the file, but they provided little information aside from the date. The most recent inspection was nearly a decade ago. Though he understood that this facility was in dire need of an inspection, he didn't see why he of all people had to do it.

 “I don’t even know anything about health regulation. This isn’t even in my field," Roy tried to reason but he was just met with the steady gaze of his subordinate who was already prepared to counter any excuse he had. 

“It is now, sir. Orders from the General. He wants us to check out the New Heissgart Village. It is due for an inspection and someone needs to do it,” Lieutenant Hawkeye stated flatly as she stood at ease on the opposite side of his desk.

“Well that’s obvious,” he huffed and waved the nearly empty file in the air as if to prove a point. “But why me?”

“Us, sir. Lieutenant Havoc, Lieutenant Colonel  Hughes, and I are coming as well.”

“I could see why Maes is going, he _is_ an investigations specialist, but why us then?” Roy complained. No one, absolutely no one wants to be a health inspector. Roy heard some of the frightening stories of dinners that moved and cat sized sewer rats from Maes, though he bet some of them were exaggerated. Even when put under question, no one in the investigations department would have raised their hand for a weekend health inspection. Riza rolled her eyes in great annoyance with him as he flipped blindly through the files, only glancing over the thin contents.

“This is all because you didn’t complete your paperwork for this month. As usual punishment holds, you would have had to go over to Northern Command for a week’s worth of training, but General Grumman filed for this instead,” she told him. Roy growled to himself and massaged his face in his hands. He knew he should never have procrastinated on his work. He was always good at getting it done, even if it was right before the deadline but now it all just caught up on him and bit him in the ass. Briggs was no joke when it came to training and it was the punishment to any soldier who didn’t get their work done or dodged a drill weekend. Being late to anything, even if it was just a simple paper could actually ruin a mission. It was the difference between an affirmative on a strike or an abort. No matter what, Roy always got his paperwork done because he knew the damages it could have, but it was just too much this time around. Even with his double all-nighter it still took another day to finish it all and that was the one day it was due. He missed the deadline for the first time in his career.

Roy looked down at the file on his desk. As a punishment for not filing his paperwork, they just gave him more. Tired and exhausted, he was relieved and actually very grateful that Grumman didn’t send him up to Briggs to battle it out with the Ice Queen herself, but he couldn’t stand the sight of more paperwork, let alone having to perform a ‘health inspection’. But with how tiny the file was and how vague its contents were, it couldn’t be that much work, could it? All of the previous reports were all limited to a couple words; In Good Standards. There was probably nothing to report. Little did he know, he couldn’t have been more wrong.

………….

Roy got out of the car and gazed around at the large green fields that made up the small town of New Heissgart. The only thing this town served as was a small train station between the Central Province and the Eastern Province of Amestris. The town only held a few civilians, mostly small family farmers that left most of the land unused. Because of this, the scenery was beautiful. It was long and covered in pastures between the clumps of trees and forest which were always a wealthy green.

They had travelled through these long fields and forests a few miles out of what could be called a town, to the Heissgart Village. It wasn’t a real village since that was located down the hill where the farmers lived and where the train station was located, but that was what it was called. Heissgart Village was an accumulation of different sized intricate brick buildings that would serve as both a hospital and a home for mentally impaired citizens. It was practically a small ‘town’ in a sense, where the patients could live peacefully and be cared for easily. That at least was what Roy read in the small files. He never knew this place existed. It was so far out, so isolated that he didn’t doubt very few people have heard of it.

Their group was current parked on the single dirt road that led in and out of the facility, staring up at what seemed to be the administrations building. It was large and had white steps that lead up from the huge green lawn. As his subordinates and friend studied their location, Roy looked around. He thought it quite odd that on a bright and beautiful summers day, where the wind was softly bristling, and the sun was the perfect temperament, there was no one to be seen roaming outside. It was completely barren. He saw a few nameless faces poking out of the windows to stare at the new arrivals, but they were closed, and the people weren’t smiling. It was eerily quiet.

A chill ran up Roy’s spine as he tried to shake the dark feeling off his shoulders. It was just a stupid health inspection. That was all. He was sure to find nothing. As they grabbed their satchels of paperwork out of the car, Roy heard his friend grumble under his breath.

“Mustang, I can’t believe you got us into this one,” he heard Hughes sigh.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Roy huffed without looking at the man, completely catching the man off guard as if he wasn’t expecting to be heard.

“Roy, no one, absolutely no one in the Investigations Office wanted to do a health inspection on Heissgart Village. It’s just… no one ever finds anything here, but… you feel it don’t you?” Roy nodded his head absently, letting his friend know that he understood. There was a feeling in the air which was unable to be placed. It was like the feeling one gets when they know something should be there but isn’t and yet can’t figure out what the original object was. It was just wrong, and Roy didn’t like it. It seemed that everyone could agree on that statement. Hughes shook his head seeming to clear his mind of the odd sensation and took a step so he was in front of their little group.

 “Alright, the sooner we are out of here, the better. My wife is cooking dinner tonight and I don’t want to miss it,” the man said cheerily trying to lighten the mood with more banter about his family. Roy saw Havoc roll his eyes at the man’s pride in being a family man. Hughes cleared his throat and started to instruct their group on basic inspections. “Mustang, Havoc, you do a sweep of the outside, Hawkeye and I will go inside to talk to the nurses and staff. Look for anything dangerous like suspicious plants, rusted nails, loose guide rails, something like that. Come find us if you get anything. If we work quick and everything is as it usually is, this shouldn’t take more than a couple hours.”

With that said, the Lieutenant Colonel and Roy’s first Lieutenant left for the main building. Hughes practically dragging Hawkeye all the way because at her pace he might have missed the appetizers his wife was sure to make. Roy reached in and removed a pen from his satchel and started a scan down the east lawn with Havoc right on his tail. He was looking on the ground for any hazardous objects while Havoc was looking at the outside structure of the buildings to make sure there was nothing wrong with them. They only found one loose railing between the first two buildings on a handicap ramp. Other than that, Roy felt like he had just been taking a rather long admiration of the hospital’s grass.

“If put to the test they could definitely win best lawn of the year award,” Roy joked lightly and Havoc returned it with a light chuckle.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong here except for a few railings, but that’s supposed to be expected from an old building. Easy fixes for sure,” the Lieutenant noted as they crossed the road towards the other section of the Village which had a small tree cover. These buildings seemed to have changed from Administration to more of the actual facilities. Dormitories, cleaning houses, and some of unknown use were here. “I am starting to agree with Hughes on this, Colonel,” he heard Havoc comment as they started to scan around the first building. “This is just… it’s too quiet.”

They split off on their separate paths as Havoc took the building perimeters and Roy took the greens. The grass was long but not overgrown, making a nice soft matt for anyone to relax on. In a perfect day like it was, the offer seemed almost tempting to Roy. The afternoon was too perfect to be spent on a stupid investigation. The sun was out and a nice breeze shifted through the leaves of the trees causing a soft rustling wave to calm his skin which felt like it wanted to crawl off him. Though peaceful, there was something about the village that made the thought of laying down and relaxing inconceivable.

The Village was so absent of life that Roy would have imagined walking through a cemetery to be livelier. In a city, even barren roads had some sort of sound to it; music escaping open windows, laughter from far off conversations. Heissgart was the absense of everything Roy understood. The sooner he got out of it, the better. However, just as Roy thought of how quickly the investigation could be done, a sudden giggle of laughter shattered the frozen existence that he had summed the Village up to be. It was a child’s voice, the first sign of life he had seen all day aside from the people who were one his investigations team. He scanned the lawn and saw that the laughter was coming from a little golden-haired boy, no older than five or six, sitting stark naked on the summer grass. Roy was taken back as to why the boy didn’t have any clothes on, but he noticed a small smile on the kid as he seemed to be pulling the soft blades of grass out of the lush lawn. The kid seemed to be genuinely enjoying his stay outside and was completely oblivious to his own indecency.

 Roy quietly approached the kid and the closer he got the more he seemed to notice about him, or rather less. The child was young, very young, and though still small, he was far too thin for anyone his age to be. His rib cage was very prominent, and the only explanation Roy could come up with was malnutrition which was impossible if they were in a hospital. He should have been properly fed there. There was no reason for him to be so small.  Not only that but Roy noticed that stumps of residual limbs were left on his right shoulder and left thigh where the rest of his limb was amputated. Scars looked puffy though they weren’t new signaling poor healing. Roy was a little disturbed at how someone so young could have lost not only one, but two major body parts. He knew that accidents happened, but he never willed himself to believe they could happen to a child.

Roy looked around him for a second wondering how the child got out there in the first place. There was no sign of a nurse or anybody for that matter and any form of physical aid like a crutch or a wheelchair was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t believe that the kid had been left their unattended, or worse, crawled there by himself. He noted that he would have to bring some very important questions up to the staff the next opportunity he got. Roy wasn’t a parent by any means. Infact, he couldn’t stand children very much and most of them were afraid of him. But, he knew that for the child to be left here like this, so obviously sick with no help at all, something was very wrong indeed.

The boy didn’t seem to know that he was there until Roy’s shadow casted over him, blocking the sun from hitting his abnormally pale skin. The boy was startled a bit, seeing a sudden onset of darkness, and he turned his head up from his little game to see what had caused it. Two large golden eyes studied him for a second, a look of confusion and curiosity twisted on his face.  However, after a split second, a bright smile had replaced it.

“Hello!” the little boy greeted him and suddenly made busy with clearing the grass down beside him. He started to toss a couple sticks aside and rearranged the odd piles of grass he had made. Roy thought it was an odd game he had made up. Seeming to have parted from the conversation nearly as rapidly as it began, Roy decided to try and continue in hopes that the child would too.

“Hello,” he said hesitantly though he tried to keep his voice remaining soft. The kid didn’t look up at him but continued to carefully balance himself as he reached over with his single arm and cleared one of the farther twigs from the small site. “I am Colonel Mustang, what’s your name?”

“Edward!” the kid eagerly introduced himself. He brushed off the grass next to him and quickly pointed towards it. Roy looked at it curiously wondering what he wanted him to do until Edward used his single hand to pat the small area of turf beside him. It was then that Roy realized it wasn’t a game, but rather Edward inviting him to sit down. Roy glanced hesitantly at the boy once before awkwardly sitting down next to him at his designated spot on his right side. Edward beamed at him and continued to pull grass out of the lush thick yard and sprinkle it around like it was confetti. The child started to pile some up on Roy’s knee without asking as if starting a new construction project. Roy wanted to complain, not liking the grass on his uniform but it was then that he noticed that the small piles of grassed and clovers beside him were actually shaped. They were built up and hollowed out to make something like a bird’s nest. Roy also realized that if he had been a little farther to the left he would have crushed the small sculpture that the kid probably spent much time making.

Roy didn’t have much experience with kids nor did he really have a typical childhood to call back on for help. But, he assumed that Edward’s offer of a seat wasn’t anything to be taken lightly and crushing his little pile of grass wouldn’t have helped anything. Roy was far too used to accidentally scaring children off simply because he didn’t know how to handle himself around them. He was quite relieved to not scare the only sign of life he had witnessed all day. Maybe he could get some answers to the questions he was looking for. Sitting down next to Edward didn’t seem to have any effect on him except make his smile bigger. Either he was doing something right or the boy wasn’t easily frightened by strangers. 

“Are you new?” the kid suddenly asked looking up at him with his wide golden eyes. His brows were furrowed in curiosity like he was trying to place him in his mind. Roy knew that he had never seen the boy before in his life, but Edward lived in such a small community with very few people, seeing a stranger would have been a rare occasion. Seeing someone who didn’t work or live there, rarer.

“No, I am not a new patient,” Roy replied much to the boy’s obvious disappointment. “I am visiting for a day. Just doing a health inspection.”

“Oh,” the boy mumbled in discontent, an awkward silence filling in their gaping conversation. Edward’s tiny fingers curled around the ends of long strands of grass but he didn’t pull them out for his project. It seemed either he got bored or deemed his newest little bird nest completed even though it still remained a shapeless mass on Roy’s knee.

Thinking it time to continue his mission, Roy pulled out his clipboard and pen that he held for his inspection. The boy watched him with sudden interest as he saw the new objects. There was a little gasp that escaped Edward’s lips as he quickly dropped everything and quickly closed the small gap between them. The kid raised himself up on his single knee and leaned over Roy’s arm to get a look at the paper he was holding. A little startled by the intrusion, Roy quickly turned the board away and scooted away from the kid to keep the distance they were at previously. Not only did Roy accidentally brush off the grass on his knee but Edward also lost his balance from his sudden motion and fell on his back, a small yelp of surprise escaping his lips.

The tension in the air after that was so thick one could cut it with a knife. Roy felt his heart freeze as he imagined the kid would start crying. His mind started to panic but instead of watering eyes or runny nose, Edward slowly pushed himself back up into a sitting position a downcast look on his face. The golden eyes glanced once to his crushed nest, then to Roy, before they rested back on the grass at his foot. There was no sign of crying, just disappointment from a false hope. Roy let out a breath as he realized chaos was avoided but with how normally Edward reacted to rejection, Roy felt like it was worse. He didn’t want to claim it abnormal for a child his age because Roy didn’t know too many kids to compare him too, but he felt like there was something missing. The silence was unsuspectingly sad. A wave of guilt built up in Roy’s chest as he wrung his fingers around the clipboard in his hand. He knew he had to say something, but he didn’t know what. Knowing something was better than nothing, Roy moved back over to the spot that Edward had originally delegated for him though know he felt unworthy of the position. After seeing that Edward didn’t run off, though still not knowing if it was because he didn’t want to or couldn’t with his amputated leg, Roy cleared his throat to get the boys attention. Edward only spared him a small sad pout with his golden eyes which made Roy feel even worse.

 “Uh, Edward, you wouldn’t mind me asking you a few questions, would you?” Roy asked him awkwardly. The upset look on Edward’s face returned to one of slight curiosity and the kid tilted his head as if that might make his question clearer to him. It didn’t.

“Why?” Edward frowned at him.

“Because…” Roy dragged out trying to find an explanation, “It’s a test! Yes, th-that’s why you can’t look at the board. I can’t let you see the answers.” The child’s eyebrows raised in sudden surprise and his mouth dropped in a gasp. The rapid change in demeanor was not what Roy was expecting at all but he felt a little better about it than before.

“A-a test? But I didn’t study!” the boy panicked as he seemed fooled by Roy’s game. Roy laughed lightly and Edward turned slightly red, a slight pout coming over his face from the light embarrassment.

“No, this is a truth test. Just don’t lie and you will pass easily,” Roy said, hoping that the kid was gullible.

“I can do that!” Edward smiled, confidence brimming in him. It was a dorky smile but added to the golden eyes and hair it seemed to shine like the sun. Roy let out a breath, glad that he had both avoided disaster and gotten on with his conversation. He had a lot of questions he figured he could ask the kid. There were several things wrong with the Heissgart Village, that much was certain, but asking a patient might get to the heart of the situation. It felt more productive than staring at the lawn for a few hours while Hughes conducted the real investigation inside. Not only that, but Edward was sitting out on an open lawn by himself, naked, with no one around to help him. That aroused a million questions Roy had just about the kid alone.

“Alright first question,” he said, jotting down a note and letting the boy prepare himself for it. Roy decided to start simple and obvious with a question that was itching his mind since he found the kid in the grass. “Edward, would you mind telling me why you aren’t wearing your clothes?”

“Clothes?” the kid asked him in a puzzled voice. Roy was slightly taken aback from the boy’s response. He thought it was rather easy to answer. Was it that he didn’t know what clothes were? That possibly couldn’t be it because the nurses obviously would be wearing them right?

“Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?” Roy restated his question a little more firmly than the last. He motioned towards his own attire incase the child still didn’t understand. The golden eyes tracked his movement before Edward glanced down at his own bare skin with a frown. There was a long moment of silence and Roy thought that the boy wasn’t going to answer him but he was soon corrected.

“I-I don’t have any,” Edward mumbled.

“Y-you don’t have any?” Roy asked as if he didn’t hear him right. Edward nodded his head and started to return to pulling grass out of the beautifully kept lawn. This time though, it was in disarray. There was no effort behind it, no nest to be made. It was an attempt to distract himself, hoping to return to the game he was playing before. It seemed that Roy’s first question was something that Edward didn’t want to talk about. Children his age were probably more focused on their favorite color or animal, not health. But the sudden way that Edward seemed to stop talking made Roy think that it was something else he was not aware of which made his mind drift back to the creepy feeling he had earlier. Edward obviously didn’t want to continue the conversation, but Roy did if it meant understanding Heissgart just a little bit better. He nudged the kid a little farther.

“Edward, why don’t you have any clothes?” He was met with silence for a short period, but the tension seemed to get even the best of Edward and he cracked first.

“Gone,” he replied imagining it to be a more sufficient answer than it was.

“Gone where?”  Edward’s face scrunched up as he hesitated. An internal debate was fought within the small child’s mind whether he should tell the truth or not. Roy quickly reminded him that it was a truth test and that seemed to push Edward’s war in his favor.

“The East Ward.” That was his final answer.

Roy frowned as he sketched down a couple words on his clipboard. No clothes, that wasn’t on the list of things that Hughes had him look out for, but it had to be something. Why couldn’t the hospital provide the boy with anything to protect himself with? He could only imagine what it would have been like for the boy in the winter time had he to go an entire year without them. Was it only him with no clothes or were there more kids without any? He looked around as if he would find more people for proof of this but there was no one else outside.

“Edward, why isn’t there anyone else out here with you?” The boy seemed to freeze in his place as the question was said. The golden eyes widened as his mouth opened and closed trying to find a valuable answer to tell him, but Roy could tell that he was wracking his brain for anything but the truth.

“I-I’m…. I don’t want to fail!” the boy whined suddenly, giving up on a lie that Roy realized he was trying to prepare. Roy pulled back as the kid suddenly burst out in what seemed to be guilt. The boy’s eyes were bridged with tears that threatened to fall as if he was ashamed to have attempted a little white lie and too scared to tell the truth.

“What? No… why would I-“

“I’m not supposed to go o-outside. Th-they’re going to g-give me my medicine if I am bad,” Edward cried. “I’m s-sorry!”

“N-no, no, no,” Roy quickly panicked as he tried to figure out how to make the boy calm down. He wasn’t expecting such a simple question to produce a violent answer. It only confused him all of the more. Edward seemed damned, like he was waiting to get a scolding for just picking flowers. Roy didn’t know how the nurses kept the little kids in line but he knew how foul medicine tasted. Nobody, not even grown adults could withstand the horrible flavor of medicine, no matter what it was. However, what really caught Roy’s attention was how the kid thought he was going to get punished for simply going outside. Why did the nurses tell him to stay inside? Roy looked down to where the child was crying, tears streaming down his face. He didn’t know how to calm children, but maybe if he talked enough he would get somewhere.

“Uh.. Edward I won’t tell the nurses that you were outside. But… to do so I need to know why you aren’t allowed outside so I will make sure not to accidentally bring it up,” Roy quickly said, hoping that reasoning worked. However, the kid continued to cry and Roy internally started to scold himself for being such a bad adult. He didn’t know how to talk to children at all. To spark some ideas he tried to imagine back to when he was little and what Madam Christmas would do to help calm him down. He realized that telling the kid to suck it up and then walking away probably was not the best way to go about things. Instead he decided to try the opposite approach. He hesitantly reached a hand out and patted the child’s back awkwardly.

“Uh, quiet down now. Don’t cry. I won’t tell the nurses,” Roy mumbled quietly, hoping that whatever words so happened to spew out of his mouth might just calm the child down. The crying turned into sniffles and Roy glanced down to see the little boy wiping his eyes with his one hand. His face was tear stained and flushed red. Edward hiccupped once and his golden eyes darted back to Roy’s hand which was trying to comfort him the best he could. Roy didn’t think he was doing too well of a job but it seemed to be working. The kid stared at it for a few minutes before tracing the arm back to its owner, a look of confusion onto his scared face. Seeing Roy, an expression wary hopefulness to them. Roy was a little taken back. It seemed Edward was just as used to being comforted as Roy was doing the comforting. It was an awkward fit, but it seemed to work.

“Promise?” Edward croaked out, his voice still thick from his crying fit before. Roy nodded his head but that didn’t seem to be good enough to ease the child’s fears.

“I promise,” he confirmed. Edward looked around the grounds as if searching for any sign of the nurse, just to make sure that Roy’s secret was safe and he wouldn’t get a spoonful of medicine while he wasn’t looking. He scooted a little closer to Roy and used his left arm to grab a secure hold of Roy’s sleeve as if keeping by his side would protect him. After confirming the security of their location, Edward leaned in and motioned Roy down towards him. Hesitantly, Roy obeyed and leaned down a little bit so that he could hear what the boy wanted to tell him.

“They moved us out of the big place until dinner,” he whispered. Roy was disturbed by what the child had said. The patients were not only ordered not to come out of their barracks rooms until dinner but moved from the main building and secluded to the lower campus for the duration of the inspection. Something was definitely going on and Roy didn’t like it. He fumbled with the one hand that Edward was not holding hostage to quickly scribble down a note on his clipboard. It was sloppy without his dominant hand, but it got the job done. What he was writing down was probably the longest report the Village ever got, and he wasn’t even done yet. Why no one else had found these deficiencies, he didn’t know but it greatly unsettled him.

Edward seemed to notice him writing on the clipboard and leaned forward once more to look over his shoulder. Roy however pulled the clipboard away once more, not wanting the child to read exactly what he was writing down about the home he was living in. Edward pouted again but luckily it seemed he wasn’t going to cry again. The child had accepted his promise, and Roy was glad he at least had his trust. He planned on keeping his promise as long as he could to avoid seeing the boy cry again. It didn’t suit him.

“Am I gonna fail?” Edward asked, reminding Roy that this was supposed to be a ‘test’ and not just his inspection. He had almost forgotten the game he had made up himself.

“No! In fact, you passed!” Roy smiled, his heart lifting as he saw the joy that sprouted in the small child. Edward squealed a little as he hopped up and down on the grass.

“I passed! I passed! I passed!” Edward cheered which only made Roy’s smile bigger. He didn’t know why but Roy never wanted that smile to leave. The excitement that Edward had seemed to leak right into him and Roy was filled with a sense of pride as he saw Edward succeed in his exam, that was, until Roy reminded himself that he was the one who made it up to begin with to get answers to questions about the inspection. He was supposed to be working, not fooling around with a little child he knew very little about. He caught sight of Havoc coming towards them as he had finished his outward inspection of the buildings. Roy needed to get back to work. With all the new concerns he picked up, he needed to get back and tell Hughes what was going on. This meant he had to cut their small play time short. Even he felt a sense of disappointment at the thought.

“Alright! Thank you for your time, Edward,” Roy exclaimed to the little boy as he stood up to excuse himself. He gently pulled his sleeve free from the boy’s grip, breaking the bond that linked them. Edward scrambled to try and regain it, but as Roy stood, he was out of his reach.

“W-wait!” the boy cried as Roy was going to turn to leave. There was a tug on Roy’s pant leg and he looked down to see that Edward now had a hold of it. He shook it a little to see if the kid would let go but he wouldn’t. “Don’t go.”

“Edward, I have to finish my inspection. I am sorry,” Roy sighed as he kneeled and gently peeled Edward’s hand off of his pants leg. The kid’s eyes widened as his grasp was broken once more and frantically looked around him for something else to keep him there. Roy stood once more to leave but the kid called out once more to him.

“Here!” Edward exclaimed. Roy turned and saw Edward sitting in the grass, holding out the small little bird nest that he had made before. He felt his heart freeze as he stared at the modest offering. The kid was giving him something? He never got anything from a child before. They were all scared of him and he never tried to interact with them before. He always thought it was better to stay away. But now, Edward was trying to give him a small innocent gift and he didn’t understand why. He didn’t know how to react. His mind wanted to be annoyed that the child was not only holding him up but trying to hand him a pile of dirt. As much as his brain thought of that cruel reaction, Roy felt only an overwhelming sense of gratitude flood through him. He faltered, not knowing whether to bend down and take it like he really wanted to, or to force himself to walk away.

Edward tried lifting it higher than his arm would allow to try and put it in his hand, but he couldn’t reach. Roy found him kneeling back down to receive the small gift. The grass nest was placed gently down in his palm and for the first time Roy felt how soft it was. It was thickly padded with intertwined strands of grass and speckled with little clover flowers. Roy looked up at the hopeful expression shimmering in the golden eyes and found his jaw tight without a response. The child’s expectation nearly killed him, and he forced himself to strangle out two words.

“Th-thank you,” he choked. The smile returned to Edward’s face and Roy was absolutely baffled by it. It was nearly as brilliant as the sun and he felt himself almost blinded.

 “Hey! Who did you find here?” Havoc’s voice rang out disrupting the peace in their exchange. Roy looked up to see the man having finally caught up to him. Havoc was looking only a little confused as to why the child didn’t have any clothes on but was more excited to have finally found some form of life in this dead village. Havoc was great with kids and they also loved him. It was the parents that the man seemed to agitate with his smoking problem, but Roy could see no issue in that here.

“Edward!” the child introduced himself once more. That earned a little chuckle from Havoc as he bent down to return the gesture. After formal introductions had been made, Havoc looked back up at Roy with a questioning look. Roy knew what he was confused as to why he was spending time with a child even through everyone in the office knew that he was not a kid person. An overwhelming feeling of self-consciousness overcame him and he wanted to hide the little nest in his hand from Havoc’s sight. It would have been pointless though since he knew that the man had already seen it.

“Come on, Colonel we need to finish our inspection. I need to get home tonight,” Havoc said, knowing that the sooner they finished their job the sooner they could leave. Roy knew he was right but still found an odd sense of disappointment. He shouldn’t be so easily distracted.

“Yeah. You’re right,” Roy said clearing his throat and trying to recover his professional persona that he had not realized he lost around Edward. He could not continue to command troops without it. He couldn’t look soft. “I have found a few things that I need to get to Hughes and-“

“Don’t leave me!” Edward complained as he realized that they were getting back to work despite Roy’s acceptance of the peace offering. Roy looked back down at his hand where the lump of formed grass was. He had half a mind to drop it with every reason to stay with the kid as their little bond promised. He couldn’t though. It was his lump of grass that Edward had given him. He didn’t think he would be able to simply let it go. However, he still needed to work.

“I have to continue the inspection, I can’t stay here forever, “ Roy tried to reason with the kid. His voice was soft but it seemed to still hold all of the impact it would if he screamed it. The kid looked heart broken as he found his new friendship slip away. It looked all but lost until an idea hit him.

“I-I could help!” the little boy suddenly exclaimed, hope in his happy sunshine smile returning to his face. “I could show you my bed, and the bathrooms, and my friends, and-“ Edward started listing off things on his fingers. Havoc chuckled lightly at the little boy. Roy looked down at the watch on his wrist. Hughes was still in the main building for another hour. He doubted he would find anything more interesting in the grass than the little kid he found. Roy looked over to the Lieutenant to his take on their options. But he looked rather surprised as he saw that Roy was considering taking the boy’s offer.

“Come on Colonel, this was supposed to be in and out. Remember, we are suffering your punishment too-“ Havoc complained.

“Read the notes,” Roy hissed at him under his breath. He pressed the clipboard into his chest and the man glanced at it curiously. There were only a few sentences, but they seemed to strike the same foul chords in Havoc as they did in Roy. Something was wrong there and Roy wanted to get to the bottom of it. As Havoc read it over, his face turned instantly from annoyed to baffled. He turned pale as he glanced up towards the upper buildings where Hughes and Hawkeye were investigating the staff.

“What?” he muttered as he read the clipboard over once more just to make sure he understood it well enough. “If they moved everyone down here then what is Hughes inspecting?” he whispered, hoping that the boy couldn’t hear them. Roy shrugged as he took a slight glance up at the hilltop where the main building sat solemnly and still. That creepy feeling seemed to flood him now and refused to go away. He didn’t like it one bit. What was going on here? Roy feared for what they might find on the rest of their investigation if they continued farther. He could stop now if he wanted to, ignore the possible miles of paperwork and stop sticking his head in farther than it belonged. All of the other investigators signed the Village off as being absolutely perfect. Maybe it was and Roy was just psyching himself out, but when he looked at the little golden eyes that stared up at him he knew that wasn’t the case. If this really was as bad as he felt, that boy should not be here. No one should.

“I don’t know,” Roy muttered back at his subordinate, “but I think having an escort is a good way to find out. I don’t like this one bit.” The man nodded in complete understanding. This was probably bigger than them. Neither of them were official health inspectors, just people working out a stupid punishment Roy earned, but there were somethings that just needed to be solved before Roy could set himself at ease.

“Alright, you want to be a part of our team, Edward?” Havoc asked as he turned back towards the little boy who was waiting impatiently for an answer. Havoc easily slid into the role of a parent, his personality blending far too easily with a child’s imagination. Roy wondered if it was because he was still a child himself. A smile spread quickly across Edward’s face and he eagerly nodded his head at the offer to join him. He probably didn’t know exactly what their investigation was for, but it seemed he was willing to help. Havoc chuckled a little at the kid’s excitement.

“You are going to have to be strong, and be a great leader to help us out. Do you think you can do it?”

“Yes! Yes!” Edward chirped, the excitement spilling over into a flurry of giggles.

“In that case, lead the way, little chief,” Havoc grinned with open arms.

“Not little!” the ‘not’ little boy whined at them. Roy hid a small smile behind his hand as the boy puffed out his chest to make himself look bigger as if to make sure he was filling the role that Havoc had described earlier. Havoc flustered to apologize to the kid, saying that he didn’t mean to offend him. Roy at least liked to see that no matter the strange feeling he was getting from this place, the little boy seemed to be lightening his mood.

“Follow me!” Edward exclaimed with a smile that seemed too big for his face. The boy started to make his way towards one of the lower dorm buildings, but Roy froze stiff as the smile was wiped off of his own face. Edward was crawling on the ground using his arm and leg to push himself backwards across the ground because the boy was missing half of his limbs. The naked boy struggled across the ground but the determined look on his face showed to Roy that this was completely normal for him. This made Roy realize that Edward really did come outside by himself without any help. No one brought him out here, he came on his own without the aid of anything. This was probably how he got around everywhere, which made Roy very upset. He needed a crutch, a chair, something. He shouldn’t be crawling on the ground with limited movement He should be walking around. Hell, he should be running. He wondered if Edward even remembered or knew what that felt like.  Even thinking about that made Roy rush over to the boy, the few pitiful steps it had taken him, and stopped him in his place.

“Is this how you always get around?” Roy asked him. He heard the scratching of a pen behind him as Havoc had taken up his clipboard and was already writing more down on the list that Roy only feared would grow bigger the longer the day went.

“I thought the test was over,” Edward asked confused. Roy sighed to himself and shook his head as Havoc gave him a wondering look. He didn’t know about the little game that they were playing earlier. Roy knew that he would need to ask Edward more questions about the Village and life there, so he decided to continue the ‘test’ for their own sakes. He might not be able to slide as easily into a playful role like Havoc did, but he knew then that one was needed.

“That was the first part of the test, but now we are going to take a second part. This one is going to be quite longer are you ready for it?” Roy said. The boy thought for a moment but quickly nodded his head. It seemed Edward liked a challenge. “Now, first question, part two, is this really how you always get around?” Roy repeated himself however he knew the answer before he even asked the question. Edward nodded his head, not seeming to understand what was wrong with his answer. It only confirmed Roy’s suspicions that Edward seemed to think that this was a normal way of getting around.

After answering his question, Edward started to struggle across the grass again. Roy sighed to himself knowing that he couldn’t and wouldn’t let him continue this. He looked down at the small lump of grass that he still held in his hand and quickly withdrew his handkerchief from his pocket, wrapped it up gently, and then deposited it in his pocket for safe keeping. Quickly unbuttoning his uniform jacket, he bent down and wrapped it around the boy before picking him up off the ground. Edward let out a little yelp as he seemed rather surprised by the sudden motion. He looked around him hesitantly for a second as if he wasn’t used to getting help but when the golden eyes rested on Roy’s own black ones, he quickly got comfortable in his arms.

“You point the way,” Roy told him. The little boy giggled and waved his hand over towards one of the dormitories. Havoc was hot on his tail with the clipboard in hand. They gave each other wary looks as they approached the brick building. Though the kid was smiling, for some reason neither of them wanted to open the door.


	2. Prison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edward shows Roy one of the buildings in the Heissgart Village he has known to call home. However, Roy wonders what child would ever want to live with the horrors that also reside there.

**_The Cripple_ **

Chapter Two

Prison

 

Roy was not prepared for what he saw in the dormitories of the Heissgart Village when he left his office that morning. No one on the face of the planet could have been prepared for what he found on this simple health inspection.

The instant Roy stepped into the building he was hit not by the smell of antiseptic and cleaning products like every hospital had, but a nasty, foul stench that flooded the hallways seemed to be ingrained into the walls themselves. It burnt the hairs in Roy’s nose and made him gag like he was choking on its thick aroma. They couldn’t see the source of the smell, but Havoc was already tearing away at the page that held their notes on the investigation. They knew that whatever lied at the source of the smell was potent if it filled the building’s hallways without much of a trace to it. Havoc was looking pale and didn’t seem to be handling the smell as well as Roy was, and that was barely at all. He doubted Havoc would be able to survive the entire tour of the building. Though Edward seemed to be doing much better than they were to the reek, probably having become acclimated to the constant smell, it still obviously bothered him like it would anyone. Now, Roy could see why the boy disregarded the nurses’ orders and went outside for a few moments.

Skeletons of patients, mostly kids, were scattered around across the cold tile floors. They were deathly thin, some even past the point where Edward was, and all were bare to the bone, without a single piece of clothing in sight. Roy was almost relieved to see some white jackets scattered around the bare bodies, giving hope that there was atleast some form of clothing, but he noticed that the sleeves were bound tight to the patients’ sides and he completely forgot the last ounce of optimism in him.

The patients that withheld the ability to walk, stumbled through the hallway on crooked legs while others were completely incapacitated on the floor. Some of them looked like they barely had the strength to stand up even if they wanted to, which might be the reason why they were just lying in the hallway. It was either that, or they were dead. Roy shook that thought from his head. They weren’t dead. They couldn’t be. Roy found himself holding Edward a little tighter to him. He felt like he was walking through hell. There was no way the file of this place could have been so damn small with all of this going on. This wasn’t a few years of degradation, it was a lifetime’s.

“Hi, Kevin!” Edward called out suddenly to one of the struggling kids. The skeletal boy seemed to be one of the better faring patients. He was perfectly built with no missing limbs or broken legs impeding his mobility.  Kevin caught sight of them and a scraggly smile spread across his face as he saw Edward in Roy’s arms. He opened his mouth to reply but the only sound that came out was a horrible howl that nearly shattered their eardrums. Roy flinched at the sudden ferocity but Edward just smiled and waved good bye to his friend.

“He said hi,” Edward translated for him as if it was obvious what the boy was trying to tell them. Roy glanced at Havoc, but he was as disseated as he was, maybe even more so. This was supposed to be a hospital for the mentally impaired. That boy should have someone trying to teach him how to talk. Other than what seemed to be his inability to speak, the boy seemed bright, normal. All of these kids should be aided, helped, taught so that maybe they could get out of there one day, but instead it seemed more like a jail than anything else; a prison from hell. Roy looked down at Edward. He didn’t seem to have anything wrong with him except for the fact that he was missing two limbs. Why was he here?

 “OH! This is my room!” Edward exclaimed tearing him from his thoughts. Roy was directed through a large grey door and into a room lined with beds. Huge windows let in the warm sunlight to brighten the room up but Roy noticed that all of the widows were just high enough to block out any peeping guests from the outside. He couldn’t imagine that it was a coincidence. The beds that filled the room were barren of blankets or sheets. Each had only a thin mattress on it, most of which were covered in horrible looking stains probably originating from some bodily fluid or another poorly cleaned up. Safety railings were pulled up on some of the beds to prevent the patients from falling out and hurting themselves, but to Roy they looked more like cages.

As Edward showed him through the room, labeling off random kid’s names for whoever slept there, Roy noticed that some of the beds didn’t even have mattresses on them. One man, quite older than the rest of the kids there, was sleeping on just the springs that made the bedframe. It appeared that the farther back into the room they went, the less of a bed patients had. As they came upon the second half of the room it seemed that instead of just running out of mattresses, the hospital even ran out of beds. Small pillows and even in some cases piles of ratted towels or newspapers, scatted the floor to form makeshift beds. Roy was absolutely horrified as he noticed that some of the newspapers came with their ow small pile of feces as if people thought they were toilets.

Havoc was no longer writing anything. He stood there with his hand covering his mouth and eyes closed to restrain his stomach from flipping over. He looked pale, like he had witnessed the demons rising from the ground. Roy was horrified because he was seeing the entirety of hell. Havoc turned around and started to walk back towards the front of the room where he would be able to imagine some form of normality. Roy didn’t stop him. He didn’t think that the man would last much longer anyways.

“And this is my bed!” Edward announced suddenly, snapping Roy out of his trance. He looked down to see Edward pointing to a small pillow on the cold tile floor. It was stained and smelled as if it was never washed in its existence. Roy bent down towards it, to get a better look but with his only arm, Edward pushed himself out of Roy’s hands and fell on top of it. He fluffed it up as if trying to make the ratty thing more comfortable to sit on. Roy wanted to pull the boy off to keep him from sitting on the disgusting thing, but he restrained himself. This was what Edward thought was normal. The kid was giving him a tour of his house, as much as Roy wanted to take all the people out of there, he needed to see the entire building and that included the horrifying conditions inside.

“I sleep next to Garfiel. He’s always trying to braid my hair,” Edward mumbled with an upset look as he reached back to ruffle the raggedy mass of golden locks. His hair was longer than a normal boy’s his age. Roy didn’t know if that was because he wanted it that way or because the nurses didn’t give him a proper haircut.

“Hey, little Eddy!” a chipper voice seemed to sing. Roy looked up to see a rather beautiful man walk over to them. He had short perfectly curled black hair and a scruffy beard around his chin from lack of shaving. Though was far from clean, presented himself as if he cared a lot about his appearance in this filth ridden building. He was fully naked and unashamed. He gave a sly wink to Roy and he felt his face heat up, very confused. Edward crossed his one arm over his chest defiantly and glared up at the man.  

“I am not little!” Edward scolded him. The man let out a squeal at the boy’s retort and ruffled the boy’s hair, much to the child’s distaste.

“Of course you aren’t, Eddy!” the man exclaimed as if he was offended the child thought he insulted him. “Who’s your tall friend here?” he asked turning to Roy for the answer.

“Colonel! He’s giving me a test and I am going to pass it!” Edward told the man with a brilliant light of determination in his eye.

“Really? Well, I bet with your mind you will be an ace!” he commented as he raised an eyebrow at Roy as if begging for an explanation. Edward was oblivious to the silent exchange and puffed his chest out in pride. It seemed that he held his opinion very high which made Roy assume that they were friends. With the way that the man talked to him, he seemed to have a lot of experience with kids which made Roy glad that Edward was at least not alone in this horrible place. There was someone looking out for him.

“C-Colonel Roy Mustang, I am with Eastern Command,” Roy introduced himself, holding out his hand. The man took it in a strong grip.

“Atelier Garfiel, the self-proclaimed mother hen of some of the boys here, at your service. Most just call me Garfiel,” the man smiled back with a small playful bow. He seemed very dramatic but also welcoming which Roy was glad for. He appeared to be very good with kids and though a patient himself, took care of some of the children there including Edward. Roy guessed that in a place as disgusting as that, even some form of family could be made.

“What is this test I am hearing so much about?” Garfiel asked, his voice rich with intrigue. If he wasn’t trapped in the Village, Roy would have assumed he would have been an actor.

“I-I’m doing a health inspection and I am asking Edward here some questions,” Roy explained to Garfiel, hoping that the man would also keep the game rolling as long as they could. Edward answered questions more readily if he thought he was going to pass a test. Garfiel looked rather surprised as if a health inspection was the last thing he expected. In these conditions, Roy guessed it was.

“Really? A Health inspection here in the lower buildings?” the man responded as if the mention of it was blasphemous. “I never would have guessed. I could give you the grand tour if you would like. I could show you a bit more of the ‘exotic’ rooms we have-“

“No!” Edward whined from where he sat on the floor. “I’m showing him!“

“Aren’t you a big man, doing this all by yourself now,” the man sang. Edward smiled with a boost of confidence. For a second Roy couldn’t tell if Edward was proud of being called big, or if it was the fact that he was showing him around the Village by himself. Size seemed like a topic Roy would have to avoid.

“You bet!” Edward puffed. “Real big.”

“Mr. Garfiel, am I right to assume you have known Edward for a while now, right?” Roy asked just for the man to confirm the answer with a nod. “You wouldn’t mind me asking you a few questions as well, would you?”

“Anything is yours,” the man said as he gave a rather fruitful bow with a clever gleam in his eyes. Roy jumped at the opportunity to get a little more detailed incite to the workings of the Village. How did it get like this? Why were the patients there? There were some questions that a little child couldn’t answer. Edward was good to coax a few simple things out of, but answers that only consisted of a few sentences were not enough to get the whole story. Though Roy was rather relieved for another source of answers, Edward was rather upset with his new acquaintanceship. The boy tugged on Roy’s pant leg lightly, turning his attention back down to him. The child wore a huge frown on his face that looked almost adorably disappointed.

“What about my test?” Edward mumbled.

“It isn’t over yet, but we are taking a break. It is Garfiel’s turn,” Roy quickly told him, trying to tread carefully. The boy pondered it a bit but then nodded his head, reluctantly allowing Roy to take Garfiel to the side. Roy called Havoc back over who seemed to have regained his composure for however long it will last.  Havoc took his place beside Edward to keep him company. He could already hear the boy’s laughter as the man picked up whatever game came to his mind. That kid was so full of energy, even in a place that had so little of it.

“Why is everyone here?” he asked Garfiel as they got to be a few feet away from where the little boy was excitedly jumping up and down on his pillow. “This is supposed to be a hospital, right? For the mentally impaired? Half of these kids, Edward, you, don’t even seem to have anything wrong with you, or something simple therapy can fix. Why are you here? How did you get here?”

Garfiel tiredly scratched the beard that littered his otherwise flawless face. Roy thought he was just trying to find his words, but he saw a shot of pain flash behind his eyes as he tried to interpret an answer. Though the man offered to help, these were hard questions to answer, most of which someone might not be emotionally ready for, and Roy knew he asked him a little too straight forward. He should have asked the man with a little more grace, but he didn’t want to beat around the bush for an oblong answer. He needed to know exactly what was going on. After a couple silent seconds, Garfiel sucked in a huge breath to compose himself. Roy saw a slight glaze over his eyes as the dams were slowly filling up. He knew that eventually the conversation would lead them towards the storm that would break them. The most that Roy could do would let the man readying himself for it.

“Most of the kids here aren’t bad kids, they…  don’t have anyone to take care of them. Some of them are perfectly normal, they just… are different,” the man muttered. “E-Edward is here just because he can’t walk.”

“Many people outside of the Heissgart Village are war amputees,” Roy reasoned. “Why is he here? He should be walking outside, for heaven’s sake. There is no reason for him to be here.”

“Those people are of age, and if not, they have someone to look out for them. I don’t know the whole story. He doesn’t like to talk about it at all. The boy spaces out for a really long time if you mention anything about his family,” Garfiel stumbled. “He came around two years ago… on his fourth birthday. Edward’s smart kid, he figured out his own ways to get around when I can’t help him. But a boy his age should be in school, not here. He told me before his last birthday all he wanted was a book, but the nurses wouldn’t allow him to even read the back of the bottles of the medicine they give him. They don’t give us anything.” Roy found his heart tightening as he heard what little bits Garfiel knew about Edward’s life. He was in the Village for nearly two years already. Being four when he first got here, Roy doubted the boy remembered much of what it was like to live normally. He probably thought that this was normal. Garfiel, though, was older. He seemed to fully understand the hell they were living in.

 “Why are you here, if you don’t mind me asking,” Roy wanting to know how the man got trapped in such a prison, or for how long he was there. Garfiel turned his head, ashamed of the answer that he would have to give. He placed a hand over his mouth as if physically pulling the words out of his mouth would have made it easier for him. His shoulders started to tremble a bit, his body deciding whether it would successfully keep the tears at bay or whether they would spill over. Roy knew that they hit the storm that Garfiel was trying to hold off. Whatever reason he was there, it was something that the man obviously grew to hate about himself. Roy shouldn’t have been so upfront about his questions. He quickly tried to apologize for his rude question but Garfiel waved him of, trying to cover up a small quake in his voice.

“I-It’s fine. I-It’s silly,” Garfiel tried to laugh. Roy saw the smile on his face crack and shatter in his wet eyes. He obviously didn’t believe whatever it was a very good joke. Neither did Roy. “Wh-when I was thirteen, I came out to my parents as being…. Gay. Since I was not of legal age yet to be kicked out, they dropped me off at the doorstep of the village and drove off. This is my twentieth year here.”

“What? And because of that they dropped you here?” Roy asked in disbelief. The man nodded his head, the word yes evaded him. “Can’t you leave?”

“No. Under their standards I-I’m mentally ill. See?” Garfiel sniffled, holding up his wrist to show a metallic bracelet tied around it that Roy completely missed. It had a plate on it like a patient’s band that read _Patient 1989 Homosexual Incurable._  Now that he looked around, Roy felt himself grow weak as every patient was wearing a small metallic band of some sort to label their ‘disorder’.  He even saw a small glimmer of metal off Edward’s wrist as he played with Havoc.

“Everything they tried… All of the medication they gave me…. Didn’t work. I’m still gay and that can’t be fixed,” Garfiel cried. Tears were streaming down his face and Roy realized that he was just as bad at comforting adults as he was comforting children. “They gave up but still I can’t go even though I’ve been an adult for some time! Edward’s a potential genius and he can’t leave only because he is missing two limbs!” Garfiel covered his face to hide his shameful tears. Roy tried to calm him with a few soothing words but he knew that whatever he said would not make this better. He doubted very little would. Garfiel had twenty of the best years of anyone’s life ripped away from him as he was imprisoned in this small Village. He stayed there for so long, his identity and his pride were all but washed away. Edward had been there for only two so far, but how long would he have to stay within these wretched walls? The patients probably spent their lifetime there, not knowing that there was an outside world that would accept them. The probably did not know what being cared for really felt like. They were caged animals. Roy felt his faith in humanity fall. Half of the people here didn’t have anything wrong with them, they were just condemned here by their own families, condemned to a life in hell, never to leave.

Roy chanced a look over his shoulder to where Edward was still talking to Havoc. Jean, being an avid smoker, was showing Edward a magic trick with his box of unlit cigarettes. He would make one cigarette disappear in his hand just so it would reappear in the other. A huge smile was spread across the boy’s face as he looked marveled. He tried it himself but Havoc already knew where it was going to be. Roy didn’t understand how the boy could be so innocent in a place like this. He smiled like the sun, purely genuine and adoring even when the place he lived in might as well have been killing him. Roy didn’t care that this was supposed to be a simple inspection. He didn’t care how much paperwork would be needed to burn this place to the ground legally. He would do it all if that meant everyone would be able to get out of there.

“Where would you go, after I close this place down?” Roy asked slightly dazed from where his own thoughts took him. Garfiel’s cries turned into sniffles while Roy thought. After hearing the question, they were silenced. He wiped the heavy flow of tears off of his face, which was flushed red from crying. Roy didn’t hold anything against him. He waited as long as it took for the man to collect his composure.

“W-what?” Garfiel asked, very confused to Roy’s question. The look on his face made it seem like the man thought he was mocking him. It hurt Roy that Garfiel thought that anyone trying to help them was lying. Care didn’t seem to exist here. The patients didn’t believe it still existed at all.

“Where would you go after I close the Village down?” Roy repeated, slowly and clearly, to make sure that Garfiel fully understood how deep his intent was weaved. The man’s eyes widened in shock and he covered his mouth for a few seconds as he was shocked by Roy’s determination.

“Y-You’re going to close the village down? Really?” he whispered in disbelief.

“I don’t know how it would go down through regulation, my friend is on that side of things, but would be a crime not to try,” Roy replied stiffly. It took a few seconds for Garfiel to fully comprehend what he was telling him, but the instant it registered the tears were back in the man’s eyes. As Roy watched the man openly sob in front of him, he found that he did not want to stop him from crying now. The tears that spilt from his eyes held every bit of emotion that was built up in him over the twenty years of being in the Village. They were tears of relief, of hope, but more importantly tears of joy. Roy couldn’t stop the joy the man felt that he could possible escape the Village and build a life for himself in the outside world.

Dirty, naked, a sobbing, Garfiel pulled Roy into a hug so strong that it surprised him. Roy felt the life squeezed out of him and he gently patted the man on the back, hoping to regain the air back into his lungs soon. Roy looked behind him to see that luckily Edward didn’t take notice even though Havoc obviously did. A small acknowledging grin formed on Havoc’s face, which aside from everything they saw, was fully determined to follow him wherever this Village lead them. Just from a small look, they knew what each other wanted to do. After a few moments, Garfiel pulled back and Roy sucked wonderful air back into his lungs. The man yet again pursued the task f wiping the stray tears from his eyes and Roy gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

“T-try to find everything you can,” Garfiel sniffled. He was trying to be helpful, which Roy was grateful for. He didn’t know much about health inspection, but he knew that it took a lot to shut down a place. He would need all the help he could get. “L-let Edward show you around. Please just get him out of here at least. Find him a good home.”

Roy didn’t know how successful he would be, he didn’t know if he would be able to get everyone out of the Village, let alone one child. But when Roy looked back to where Edward was playing with Havoc, he knew he would find away.

“I will,” Roy promised. Garfiel knew his determination and thanked him over and over again. Every time Roy felt like it only meant more.

“Do you have any idea where I might be able to find anything more for the inspection?” Roy asked him finally.

“O-Over in the east wing. I-I don’t know what’s there, but none of us e-ever go there,” Garfiel mumbled.

“Why?”

“B-because the people that the nurses take back there never come out.”

………………..

Edward had navigated them through many of the other rooms of his cottage which were all in much the same state as the bedroom. The playroom was bare of all but a couple toys. A small ‘bad box’ as Edward liked to call it, was set up in the corner for any of those who misbehaved. Roy would have liked to imagine that the people put in it were only there for a few minutes, but Edward made the comment that a friend of his was left in there for three days before someone remembered him.

The bathrooms were horrifying to say the least. Waste was everywhere, not just in the dysfunctional toilets, and the large washing tubs looked to be rusted and currently being used as beds by some of the patients. Edward made comments like somethings were smelly or that he didn’t like to go in certain places, but overall he didn’t seem disgusted by his standard of living. He acted like it was normal which tore at the edges of Roy’s mind. He was so utterly revolted by the place that he was quite grateful when Edward finished the tour. As he couldn’t stand being there for more than a couple hours, he didn’t understand how someone could live there for two, or even twenty years. But, as much as Roy wanted to complete the inspection for his own stomach as well as the wellbeing of the patients that resided there, that was only one building within the entire Heissgart Village.

Knowing that he would need all the help he could get, Roy stormed up the lush and healthy green lawn towards the Admission building on the upper part of the campus. Out of anyone, he knew that Hughes would help him close the investigation. Not only was the man an actual investigations specialist, but he also had a heavy set of morals that motivated him. Roy didn’t know that if showing his friend what he just witnessed would fuel Hughes’ rage, or break him. The fiery warmth of anger was slowly building up in Roy and he knew that it was catching, and he wouldn’t be able to put it out until the Village was shut down. For Hughes though, either way, the man would know what to do.

Havoc was trailing behind him and had his pace near a sprint to try and keep up with Roy’s quick and heavy steps. He looked tired, but Roy knew that he would find the energy to see this inspection to the end. One thing kept Havoc a little more focused on the mission and that was Edward. Havoc had taken a liking towards the little kid, something Roy didn’t want to admit he did as well. Seeing Edward there in the Village, though one kid of many, fueled their engines to keep them going. The instant all of the people were out of there, maybe Roy would let them run out of steam.

Edward was bundled up in Roy’s arms as they moved across the lawn. His uniform coat was wrapped tightly around the boy’s waist to keep what form of public decency the child had left. However, though Roy and Havoc were determined to get to Hughes and tell him what was going on, Edward was not as keen on going into the building as they were. Edward was weakly trying to push himself out of Roy’s  grip. Only having one arm made his efforts futile, but the child continued to struggle in his arms.

 “N-No! I am not allowed to go up here until d-dinner!” he cried as he tried to fight him. The kid’s hand flew up into his face and Roy found his head being pushed away by the very small hand. He tried to keep a firm hold on Edward in fear of dropping him. “Th-they are going to give me my medicine i-if I go! P-put me down! I don’t w-wanna-“

“Edward, you aren’t sick. They won’t give you your medicine,” Roy argued quickly. He didn’t tear his eyes off the building in front of them to observe the kid’s expression but by the amount he was fighting, his words did little to calm the boy.

“They g-give it to me when I am bad! Don’t take me up here! Th-they will find out I w-was outside! You promised,” he struggled. The small hand pushed him away harder and smushed his face. Roy turned his head away slightly to get out of the boy’s range. He couldn’t see well when Edward was trying to reconfigure his face like that.

“I promised you already, Edward,” Roy grunted as he turned back to face the child. The hand pushed his head away again as the boy refused to calm down. “I am not going to tell the nurses you were outside. But you just have to come with me to finish the test. You were going to show me around, remember? Now I just need you to help me show my friends a few more places on the grounds.”

“B-but the nurses are going to f-find out I was bad!”

“If they do, I will protect you,” he answered, his voice deep and calm which caught the boy’s attention. The boy froze as he pulled his hand back from Roy’s face. Black eyes were met with wide gold ones as Edward searched him for the truth. The truth was, Roy didn’t know if he could protect Edward. He never met the nurses and surely the medicine they gave him would have just been harmless cough syrup. But Edward was afraid of them, he could tell. The kid didn’t seem afraid of much, but he was afraid of the nurses. If Roy couldn’t protect Edward from whatever danger he imagined there to be, he at least would try to make him less afraid.  Roy waited in anticipation as they had reached the door of the main building and the boy had yet to give an answer. But slowly, shallowly, the boy nodded. A great pressure lifted from Roy’s chest and he squeezed the boy lightly in gratitude.

“Promise?” the boy said hopefully. Roy felt a slight smile of relief pass through him.

“Promise. I will ensure it.”

Though the fight was removed from Edward, the tension in his body was not. His single arm grabbed a handful of Roy’s white shirt and held it tightly. Some might imagine that it was him not wanting to fall from Roy’s grasp. To him it was obvious Edward didn’t want to go into where the nurses were working.

They walked into the building to find it nearly vacant of life. It was complete contrast to the lower buidlings as it was sparkling clean and held no odd smell to it whatsoever. Roy even noticed that he could almost see himself in the reflection of the tiled for. He felt like he was dirtying the place just by his presence. There were no patients in sight either. Instead of having them laying helplessly in the hallways, the place looked bare of life. Roy send Havoc to go check the offices to their right for anyone to direct them towards their fellow comrades but the only thing that they had gotten from that endeavor was a well-earned shrug. Where was everyone?

As Roy listened, he heard a low roar like voices picking up a conversation. He looked over to find two large double doors on the left-hand wall made of polished oak. There was a sign above that read ‘Cafeteria’ in friendly red letters. He glanced down around Edward at his watch to notice that it was almost one o’clock. It was time for lunch and yet surely over half of the Village residents were not there to enjoy it. Roy’s brows knitted together as he made his way towards the tall doors and lightly nudged one open with the toe of his boot.

“Sir,” he heard Havoc breathe. It seemed that he wanted to say something but even Roy knew that there were no words for what they saw. Walking into the room was like walking into another world. It was filled but not crowded with patients. Each one of them were able to claim a seat and tray of food as their own. The place was clean, well-lit and furnished but because of this Roy felt disgusted. All the patients were clothed in hospital gowns while the patients down in the other dormitory had nothing at all. He even saw a poor girl limping around with the aid of a crutch. Nurses, nonexistent in the lower buildings, were watching the floor and even helping spoons full of mushed food into little one’s mouths though most of them looked like they were trying to refuse.

Hughes was casually talking to a few of the head nurses as well as a couple men in business suits. Roy assumed that those were the owners of this atrocity. They looked rather happy for the good standards they were upholding in the upper buildings of the village. Hughes looked to be done with his inspection of the building and was casually talking to them about the weather and sorts while Hawkeye reviewed the paperwork beside him. They must have been waiting for their half of the inspection to be completed so that they could add it into the file for the Heissgart Village. Hughes was too friendly with the owners of the building which made Roy know that he was oblivious to anything that he and Havoc witnessed.

As they approached them, it was one of the doctors that caught sight of them first. His green eyes filled with shock as the man realized how damned they all were. Roy felt the urge to smirk as one by one the owners and nurses caught sight of him holding Edward and realize that their illusion had been shattered. However, the rage burning inside of him won out and he scowled at them. His look was frightening. The lot of them tried to keep their composure and act professional, but it was in that moment that they knew they weren’t going to win.

Hughes looked up and traced the paths of the owners stares to where Roy was standing. His eyebrows reached the top of his forehead in surprise as he took in what he was seeing. Seeing his friend holding a completely naked bony child was the last thing Hughes was expecting to see. His mouth dropped open and managed to find the words that everyone else was lost for.

“Wh-who’s this?” Hughes said, managing to force a confused smile onto his face. He seemed to be addressing Edward to look inviting. Hughes was very great with kids even though he was still a prospective father and as of yet had no kids for himself only one on the way. Roy did not blame him that Edward did not answer him. The kid was closed and all of his muscles were tense. Wide golden eyes stared in fear at the doctors and owners of the Village. Edward was terrified of them. Roy pulled Edward a little closer to him and gave him a small reassuring pat on the back.

“This is Edward,” Roy replied stiffly. “He’s one of the residents here.”

“Where is his clothes?” Hughes asked. He had repeated the first question Roy had asked Edward. At that point in time, Roy didn’t realize just how far that one question would take him on his investigation. Roy looked back at Havoc who was holding the clipboard with their forms on it. They had run out of room to write everything and ended up pulling out a piece of scratch paper from one of the notebooks Havoc had on them. That page was almost full too. With a nod of Roy’s head, Havoc handed over the clipboard to Hughes so that he could read through it. He didn’t think that any of them had the words to explain.

It only took Hughes to the first line to look like he lost his stomach, but he was a thorough man and would continue all the way through if he had to. As Roy waited patiently, Hawkeye walked over to them. Though no emotion ever betrayed her, she seemed to be just as confused as Hughes. Roy thought it might have been a coincidence where she decided to stand but she seemed to carefully positioned herself directly in Edward’s line of sight which was currently locked on the nurses in front of him. The golden eyes blinked a couple times and looked up at the new person in blue. A weak smile grew on Edward’s face which was the first one Roy had seen since they walked in there.

“So you’re Edward,” Hawkeye smiled with the most inviting tone Roy had ever heard her use. “I am Riza Hawkeye.”

“H-hello,” Edward mumbled shyly. Hawkeye’s smile only got bigger and she looked up to Roy, her brown eyes hardening instantly back to their normal professional state. It seemed like everyone had a child side except for him. He didn’t know how they could change demeanors so fast.

“Sir,” she said standing up straight, “I think it might be best if we take Edward outside. I don’t know what you wrote down, but it seems like it might cause a lot of friction. We might have to talk awhile and Edward shouldn’t be caught in any misdirected arguments.” Roy felt a sudden protective urge spike in him. He tightened his grip on Edward at the thought of leaving him outside while they talked about what was going on. Anything could happen to him out there. He couldn’t just leave the kid alone. Hawkeye of course sensed his hesitation.

“Sir, I could take him outside and watch over him. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to keep him in here with those-“

“Ah! You are perfectly correct! We should take Eddie here outside to get some fresh air,” a sudden falsely chipper voice spoke up. Roy looked to his left and saw the green-eyed doctor next to him. The round glasses perched on his nose casted an odd glint in the fluorescent lighting. A little name tag on his white lab coat read ‘Shou Tucker MD’ on it. It seemed he was medically qualified, but so far at the Heissgart Village, Roy only learned that things weren’t always what they appeared to be. He didn’t know if it was the shifty look in his eyes or the man’s haggard appearance that made Roy instantly distrust him. Either way, Edward was terrified of the man in front of him. The little kid let out a squeak and buried his head into Roy’s shoulder as if imagining the man wasn’t there would make him go away. How Roy wished the world worked like that.

“One of my lovely nurses will come and take him off your hands. It should also be about time for his medication and-“

“No!” Roy and Edward said together. Roy angrier while Edward was trembling. A sudden frightful sob started to chortle out of Edward’ chest and Roy felt wet tears seep through the thin cloth of his white shirt. He looked down at the small child curled up in his arms who was crying softly in fear. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew that he was not going to leave Edward in the hands of those nurses. He looked up at the doctor with the most ferocious glare he could muster and Tucker took a few steps back. He looked taken back but not surprised. The cheap friendliness that his green eyes held previously fell away and the only thing that was left was cold ice. The smile on his face straightened out into a thinly pressed line.

“I know you might think you know what is going on here, Colonel,” the man hummed smoothly, “but you don’t. You don’t understand the special needs of the patients, especially Edward here. People like to think that they can do what a physician can, but they cannot. You cannot get in the way of a doctor and their patient especially when you don’t understand the running of our state.”

“I think I know a fair amount of what is going on here,” Roy huffed, keeping his glare steady.

“The upper half of the Heissgart Village is in perfect condition and meets all health standards required by the state.”

“And the lower buildings?”

“Are none of your concern,” the man smiled.

“Mustang,” Roy heard his name beside him and saw Hughes standing there. It appeared that the ghosts that Heissgart was now leaking out of its walls has scared him. However, through pale and shaking body, the man looked like he was thinking a mile a minute. Every possible way to strip the Village of its hauntings was racing through his head and running into every obstacle that was put forth. Hughes grabbed a firm hold on Roy’s elbow with such force it made him wince. His friend nodded towards the doors of the cafeteria, motioning that he needed to talk for a few moments. Roy was going to follow him but the hold that Hughes had stopped him.

“Alone,” he emphasized, and Roy finally understood what he meant. Without Edward. He looked down at the little child in his arms. The last thing he wanted to do was to let go of him, especially when he was terrified and crying. But he had to continue the inspection or else he knew that Edward would never get out of there. It was either upset Edward now, or leave him there forever. Roy of course chose the first answer. He looked behind him and motioned for Hawkeye and Havoc to follow them out into the hallway. They all seemed to be on the same line and quickly left the doctors to ponder what was going to happen to their estate. Roy hoped it burned.

When they were out in the hallway by themselves, Roy looked down to where Edward was curled up in his arms and nudged him a little bit. The child only curled tighter into him and Roy tried again.

“Hey, come on, everything is alright. We are away from the nurses. They aren’t going to hurt you,” Roy whispered to him gently. A large golden eye poked out from where Edward had his head buried and looked up at him. It was puffy and red from crying but the child seemed to have calmed down knowing that they were out of harms way.

“A-are you sure?” Edward hiccupped. Roy smiled and nodded his head.

“Of course,” he replied gently. “However, now I am going to have to go talk to my friend here, Lieutenant Colonel Hughes. Lieutenant Hawkeye is going to take care of you for a few minutes.” Roy moved to hand him off to a rather annoyed Lieutenant. The threatening look in her eye said that her taking Edward better not have because she was a woman. Edward flinched as he was about to change hands. He seemed unsure of Hawkeye and didn’t want to let go of Roy. Even when in her arms, Edward did not let go of Roy’s shirt where he was clinging desperately before. However, if the boy didn’t trust them, Roy had the feeling he would have put up a fight to stay where he was.

“They are going to be talking about a few things, Edward,” Riza said, her voice calming but strong with authority. “The Colonel will be back soon.” Edward took his wavering glance off her for a moment and sent it back towards Roy to ask if this was true. Roy simply nodded his head and gave him a reassuring pat on the back. Edward’s grip on his shirt faltered for a second before relinquishing its grasp and switching over to Hawkeye’s uniform jacket instead. Roy was relieved that there wasn’t a fight.

Hawkeye started to distract Edward with anything she could find and took a seat down on a bench in the hallway. Roy smiled slightly seeing that Edward was starting to relax a little bit. A hand rested on his shoulder and Hughes dragged him a little way down the hallway to get some space for their conversation. His friend looked pale and severely frustrated. It didn’t seem he was expecting this stress on a simple health inspection. In fact, Roy imagined that the only thing running through his head before he brought him the news was if he would get back in time for his wife’s dinner.

“Roy,” Hughes breathed. He rubbed the back of his neck tiredly, which was covered in a thin layer of sweat. It seemed that the news that Roy had given him was overwhelming him. There were things in there that you only read in books or saw in estranged newspapers. They never guessed that they would be the ones writing the column. His friend seemed lost for words so Roy took up the conversation for himself.

“Maes, is that what you were inspecting all day?” he asked and gestured back towards the closed doors of the cafeteria. Hughes nodded his head with closed eyes as if he couldn’t believe it himself. He handed Roy the file that had his report in it. He looked ashamed at his work as Roy hesitantly opened it. The reports that Jean and Roy handed in were polar opposites to what Maes and Riza whipped up in the main buildings. At the very bottom of the page the words ‘In Good Standards’ was written in Maes’ hand writing. Roy felt sick in a very different way that Maes did at that moment.

“Where did you get this information?” Hughes whispered with a weak voice. It seemed he didn’t want to attract any attention towards them. The man’s eyes darted down the bare hallway which made him seem a little more at ease.

 “Down in the lower buildings as we were doing our checks,” Havoc said, joining his conversation. Roy nodded his head in agreement but Hughes looked even more damned than he was before.

“Edward was playing by himself outside on the lawn when I found him. He took us through the building,” he added.

“ _In_ the lower buildings? You were only supposed to go around the outside. We don’t have search warrant for lower buildings only the main few. The lower buildings are new and aren’t in need of an inspection for a few more years. We can’t touch them,” Maes scolded him. If they weren’t allowed to search the lower buildings, the report that Jean and Roy had whipped up was null and void. They couldn’t stake a claim on it and it couldn’t be used in any investigation. Roy felt his heart sank with the news. How could he have been so stupid? He read the mission breif before they left yet forgot the restrictions their inspection had. Now he had built up a false hope inside himself and some of the patients in the Village. They all thought they were getting out of there, but Roy’s evidence would do shit for them. The doctors knew this. Roy remembered how Tucker smiled at him and told him not to concern himself with the lower buildings. The man knew and was using it to his advantage. The nurses were cleverer than he had given them credit for. They would get their way one way or another and everyone that went against them would be in the hole, including Edward.

 Roy glanced back at the little boy sitting in Riza’s lap. He had promised Garfiel that he would try to at least get the kid out of there. If they couldn’t shut down the village, the child would be left to the mercy of the nurses, which Roy highly doubted they had a lot of. He couldn’t imagine what they would do to the child, or any of the patients, just for revenge. Failure wasn’t an option. Maes seemed to know that. His mind appeared to be running a mile a minute evaluating any and all options that they could take.

“I need to make a call to the General to try and get another clearance for those lower buildings. It might be easier to get since you found Edward outside of the buildings and he showed you around. If he is mentally stable, we can use that as a reason to suspect somethings wrong. They will be sure to give us a warrant,” Maes told him, lifting his spirits significantly. “What we have here is enough to push for major reform and rebugetting by the next month.”

“Reform?” Roy asked in disbelief. “We need to shut this place down!” he whispered harshly. This made the man surprised for once.

“You want to- but think of what would happen to all the patients. We can’t just throw them on the street!” Hughes returned in the same manner.

“It would be better than here! Look!” Roy growled, grabbing his friend by the shoulder and guiding his gaze towards where Edward was sitting. “Over half of them don’t even have anything wrong with them! They are normal kids! Hell, one of the patients was in here for twenty years because he was gay!”

The look of surprise in Maes’ eyes suddenly hardened and his mouth closed into a thin line. Roy saw the man quickly scribble out his own original diagnostic of the main building as he began to storm back towards the offices of the admissions building.

“I am going to call everyone I know,” was all he said, and Roy knew that Maes was now an unstoppable force. They were going to have to dive back into this all over again.

 

 


	3. The East Ward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roy gets a search warrant for the entire village and now has to make a trip into one of the most notorious buildings in the village; the East Ward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After a long lapse in writing I am back into revising my stories. It might take a while because my motivation in anything is low, but I will continue to chug along slowly.

**_The Cripple_ **

Chapter Three

East Ward

The search warrant came faster than Roy had expected. As soon as Maes told General Gruman what was going on, men were instantly sent out to help in the inspection. The only thing that they needed to do until then was sit and wait. It took a few hours to get from East City’s command center to the Heissgart Village, even more if the soldiers got lost in their travel. Their inspection could not continue without that search warrant and time was ticking by. Roy felt his legs become restless once the phone call was over. He wanted to go out and put a stop to the Village’s vial care, but he had not the power to do so. So, with Edward still in his arms, he had to wait on the steps of the Admissions building with nothing better to do than to talk about his third favorite reptile.

“So yeah, frilled lizards are cool,” Roy muttered as Edward sat on his lap head deep in the conversation. Roy had forgotten how the kid even brought this up. He had forgotten why he was still talking. He didn’t even know what his third favorite reptile really was. He had never thought about it before. But, if Edward wanted to know, Roy guessed he had to make up something to tell him. “They have these little frills around their neck that they expand out to make themselves look bigger. They use it to frighten away predators.”

“Does it work?” Edward asked curiously. Roy shrugged his shoulders not really sure.

“Sometimes. If you make yourself look bigger and stronger, sometimes people won’t mess with you even if you are really small,” he told him. Edward’s mouth opened a little as he breathed out an ‘oh’. He wanted to permanently press this information into his mind. Maes always told him that kids were smarter than half of the adults in the world. Roy didn’t know if that was true, but they were at least full of fun facts and were willing to spill them at whatever opportunity. Edward seemed like he wanted to make a whole library of them.

“What’s your fourth favorite-“ Edward started to interrogate but was cut off by Riza joining them on the last two steps. She sat down next to them, looking tired as ever. With all this extra time on their hands, Riza was probably not going to waste it away doing nothing. Relaxing always seemed to be a chore for her.

“You bored?” she asked but he shrugged.

“How can you be bored when talking about your fourth favorite animal-“

“Reptile,” Edward corrected him though his voice was a little weaker than before. It seemed that even after his short time with Riza, the kid was still a bit intimidated by her. Roy had spent many years as commander and friends to the Lieutenant and he still was very much intimidated by her.

“Yes, reptiles specifically,” Roy smiled. A light-hearted grin grew on Riza’s face and Roy could almost imagine a smile jumping off of her lips but he knew she wasn’t that type of person. “How about you?”

“Needed some fresh air,” she said as she dropped the bag she was carrying off her shoulder and rested it on the ground. It tilted over and some of the contents that were stuffed inside of it spilled out. Riza was always very prepared when she went on missions and had nearly anything anyone would need. She had a medical kit, snacks, notebooks, pens, and even books for when they had down time. Anyone who wanted anything would go to her. It was practically a monopoly of resources. She was the only person smart enough to bring them. She sighed seeing the mess that was made and bent over to pick them up however she seemed to catch someone else’s attention with her mysterious bag of goods. Edward’s jaw dropped open as he let out a huge gasp. His eyes huge and frozen in shock. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Roy thought something was terribly wrong until he caught sight at what the boy was staring at.

“I-Is that a book?” he asked in disbelief at the tomb laying on the ground. Without warning, he dangerously leaned over to try and reach it with his little arm though it was just out of reach. Roy let out a little yelp as he fumbled to pull him back on his lap where he was about to fall off. Riza looked up at the kid’s eagerness and picked up the book for him. Edward’s hand shot up for it greedily as if came into reach. Roy never saw a kid so yearning for a book.

 “I don’t think this book is for you,” Riza said weakly. The cover read _Introduction to Xingese_ in bright friendly letters. Roy raised his eyebrow and Riza glared back at him defensively. The Lieutenant was trying to learn a new language but Roy didn’t know that she decided to pick one of the hardest. However, though she was trying to find Edward something easier to read, the child was relentless. He was leaning as far as he could just to touch the pages of the book. Roy, all the while trying to keep him from falling off his lap, relented and motioned for his subordinate to give the book to Edward. She handed it over and the child fumbled to hold it in his one arm. After nearly dropping it three times, they got it situated on his lap and opened to the first page.

Edward’s eyes started to scan the page and nothing else came from him. Roy waited for him to hit a word he didn’t know and stop but he kept on going. He wondered if the child understood what he was reading or if he just wanted to pretend. Either way, nothing seemed to distract him from it. Edward was glued to the pages in less than a minute.

“Wow, he focuses more than I do,” Roy muttered his amusement.

“Sir, _everyone_ focuses more than you do,” Riza retorted as she leaned back on the steps realizing that her one book was taken from her.  

“I didn’t think that he would want to read so badly. Most kids would avoid it like the plague.”

“Well, he isn’t most like kids,” Riza sighed. Roy saw her eyes scan the boy once as if to solidify the child’s differences. Roy wondered if she found anything. “Growing up here, with absolutely nothing. Anything, even a book, is worthwhile.”

“Well, when he gets out of here he can have all of the books he wants,” Roy smirked as he watched Edward flip the page without blinking. It seemed that he was completely oblivious to their conversation. The only thing he was bothered with was the writing on the page.

“That brings me to my question, sir,” Riza hummed. Roy looked over to her to see that she was staring at her wringing hands. This must have been a question that was difficult for her. Which only meant that it was very personal. She was never good at asking those questions because when she did they became very blunt. “What do you think will happen to everyone once they get out of here?”

Roy frowned and looked away from her worried brown eyes and pondered a little bit. What would happen when they got all the patients away from this place? As much as Roy wanted that to be the happy ending, he knew it was far from it.

“Children would probably be given back to whatever family they came from, any relatives. If they don’t have a family, they would be sent to orphanages around the country so that they could be adopted. The adults would be given a small stipend to start their lives from,” Roy told her knowing that the idea sounded better than the reality would undoubtedly turn out to be. The children had a low chance of being adopted. Roy knew that difficulty and was lucky that when he was a child he was not sent to an orphanage after the house fire that had killed his parents. His Aunt was able to take care of him, so he got to avoid the struggles of being adopted which for most was an endless battle. The adults who have been in the villages all their life, probably had no clue how to really function as adults. They probably had no social skills or abilities to use in the workforce. They would not know how to survive and would most likely end up in a local homeless shelter. Though freed from the village’s crimes, the patients would only live subpar lives a fraction better than the ones they had beforehand. In some cases, maybe worse.

“Sir,” Riza said, not buying into the sweet trick of the flimsy idea he had put forth. Roy knew that she saw reality and was grateful for someone who was so willing to drag him out of the clouds he wanted to live in. “Whatever you do after this all happens, I expect you to weigh your options and make the right decision when the time comes. But sir, weigh all of Edward's options too.”

“Of course,” Roy replied hesitantly. Riza was looking at him with a stern determined expression and he was very confused as to where it came from. She saw his confusion and sighed as if he was an idiot for missing the point however did not elaborate on her statement. It seemed that she had faith in him that he would eventually figure it out. That was stupid of her. Roy tried for the few minutes of sitting there to understand what she meant but drew a blank.

As Roy’s thoughts wandered he looked up to the bright blue sky. A light breeze was rustling through the trees and brought a soothing sound to Roy’s ears. If this place wasn’t a horror show, it might be a nice place. He closed his eyes tiredly and allowed the sun to warm his face as he relaxed on the front steps of the Admission building. The only thing that dragged him out of his peaceful trance was a sudden odd exclamation that came out of Edward.

“D…Darao ….. yi… yixia,” Edward mumbled out loud. Roy’s eyes widened as he looked over to Riza who was staring back at him. Was he speaking Xingese? “Darao yixia,” Edward repeated with more fluency. The golden eyes turned back towards Roy and Edward was overtaken by the curiosity behind it.

“Colonel, how do you say this?” he asked innocently.

“I… I don’t know Edward. It’s in Xingese-“

“You are saying it right,” Riza interrupted him, earning a little smile from Edward. He gave a little victorious exclamation before he attempted to return to the pages however that attempt was thwarted when Maes approached them from the Village’s road. Roy saw a couple of military vehicles pulling into the Village and parking. There were only four men sent from the Eastern Headquarters to help them. Roy knew that they needed a lot more than that. Maes had a file of papers already in his hands and a tired smile was wearily painted on his face. He had the search warrant. The inspection was going to begin once more.

“You ready?” he breathed. Though one might think he looked excited for the continuation of the inspection, it was only eagerness to get it over with. Only at the end would they know what would come of the village.

“Ready as I ever would be,” he sighed in reply. Roy reached forward and gently tugged the book free of Edward’s grip. It took him a second to realize it was gone and when he did, he looked around desperately for where it went. He saw it handed over to Riza and Edward reached for it again with such force he almost toppled out of Roy’s arms.

“Noooo,” Edward whined as he unhappily watched Riza tuck the book back into her bag. “I want it!” the kid pouted but Roy tucked his jacket back around the boy and picked him up as he struggled to stand. His arms were sore from carrying Edward around and he feared that he would drop him, but he forced himself to keep them steadfast. He would not lose him because he was clumsy.

“Edward, you can read a little later. Remember that test we were talking about earlier?” he asked Edward, hoping to distract the kid from his disappointment. Edward’s eyes only lingered on the hidden book for a few more seconds before turning towards him. He didn’t say anything but nodded his head slowly. The pout was still on his face as he was obviously sour about the book being taken.

“Well, we are going to continue it a little longer, alright? This time my friend Lieutenant Colonel Hughes is going to be giving it. He needs to see the lower buildings,” Roy told him softly.

“Again?” Edward asked.

“Again.” Edward frowned but nodded his head and allowed Roy to carry him down the steps. There was a rough hand that patted him on the back and Roy looked over to see Maes looking at him over his glasses. He saw bags underneath the man’s eyes and he knew that while he and Riza were relaxing outside, Maes was stressing. Roy had told his friend to call his wife, but by the looks of it he knew that he disregarded his advice. After all, something like the Village would be the last thing a prospective father would want to tell his wife existed.

“Roy, I know I read your report but…. How bad is it really?” he asked.

“You are not prepared,” Roy stated flatly. Maes looked a little taken back at the statement but was not offended. “No one is prepared.”

…….

Roy saw more of the Heissgart Village than he had wanted to see that day. He had seen more of the village than he wanted to in his life. He would have liked to say that Edward’s light-hearted personality had taken his mind off the atrocities inside of the buildings. It didn’t, but did make it just a little more bearable. Maes didn’t handle what was inside as well as Roy had thought he would. In fact, he was taking it with less grace than Jean had. Riza, who was now joining them on the tour, withheld her disgust behind a mask of indifference. However, every now and then Roy saw it crack a little more.

Edward was fidgeting in Roy’s arms, longing for the book Riza now had back in her possession. He was very reluctant to put it down in the first place and very upset he didn’t get more than two pages into it. Roy had promised him that he would get it again when they were done, but that still didn’t seem to settle the child’s desire to steal it back. When they entered the sleeping quarters of the first building, the one where Roy found out Edward slept on only a small ratty pillow, Maes looked ready to hurl himself out the nearest window. But opposite to all their reactions, Edward was over excited to tell Garfiel about his day. The tall handsome man was pulling a rather rambunctious child off another and scolding them gently. Though at first glance Roy pictured them as merciless wild animals, the children quickly apologized to each other under Garfiel’s rule and forgot all about their little feud. It seemed that the man was held to high regard by nearly every patient in the building.  The two of them talked to Garfiel for a while as Maes made his way around the room to look it over. Edward eagerly told Garfiel about the book he was reading and told him all about the strange words he was learning. The man looked overly ecstatic to see that the child had found something to read. He said that learning that he was reading something was the best surprise in the world. Roy knew that in that moment he couldn’t be happier.

They reluctantly left the sleeping area and continued through the buildings of the lower village. Each one was worse than the last and Maes was absolutely repulsed. Roy could hear him cursing underneath his breath at the owners. He hoped that they got damned to hell which was very strong language for his friend to use. This was the only case Roy knew of that he obviously meant what he said. The day drew on and eventually they took a rest on the fresh green lawn to review what they had. Instead of the couple pages that were provided by the form for extra writing space, Maes had a notebook which was quickly filling with health hazards provided by the Village. Carelessness caused many places under inspection to get a failing grade, but the Heissgart Village failed purely on neglect. As Maes flipped through the notebook there was a few beads of sweat that coated his brow. The anger and stress of simply seeing what they did was getting to him. If he didn’t have a mental breakdown by the end of the inspection, Roy would suspect something was wrong with him.

Maes rubbed a heavy hand over his mouth and jaw as he stared at the cumulation of their hard work with distaste. Something was wrong.

“What is it?” Roy asked as he resituated the small Edward in his arms. They were becoming dead tired from holding the child up for so long. Though Edward was frightening thin and was significantly lighter than a boy his age should have been, the hours were wearing on him. Seeming to see his struggle, Riza reached over and relieved him of the weight. Both him and Edward were very reluctant to part, but Roy sighed as he felt the blood rush back into his sore arms. As Riza situated the child in her arms, Edward reached out his only arm for Roy again but came just short of grabbing his jacket. There was a frown on the kid’s face that Roy didn’t know the origin. He smiled weakly and gently took the small hand in his in hopes that it would ease the child’s worry. It was odd. Doing so eased his own as well.

“We only have one more building but… if we don’t see anything more…. Well, what we have here is enough for major reform and budgeting. Most of their issues are because of understaffing and lack of space which can be fixed with new dorms and more nurses. Unless they refuse our suggestions, we cannot shut them down,” Maes relented, popping all of the hope that they were building up in their journey through the village. What they saw could destroy a man. Some of the soldiers that came along with the search warrant had to stop and sit out on the inspection. Roy didn’t blame them. The only thing that was keeping himself going was the hope that all they saw would stop that day. He was imagining that they could put a stop to it once and for all, but Maes said that it wasn’t the case. They needed more. What more could they possibly give?

“Hopefully,” his friend continued, “we have what we need in this last building here.” He pointed up with the pen in his hand towards a building that was set apart from the rest. It was hidden amongst a small patch of trees near the borderline of the village. The sun only casted shadows amongst the darkened brick silhouette of their last hope of saving the patients. Amongst the lawn was the small fenced in area of the Heissgart Village’s cemetery which was neatly tucked to the back corner of the village out of the sight and minds of the patients and staff. Roy squinted his eyes to see the stones that marked the graves where patients were interred but didn’t see any names. He only saw numbers like those seen on the wrist bands that labelled the villagers’ illnesses.

Roy felt the small hand that was engulfed in his pull away and he looked down in surprise to the missing warmth that was there before. Edward had tucked his arm into his chest and was curling up into a small ball in Riza’s grasp. He was pale and his eyes didn’t seem to stray far from the building that they were heading towards. Roy knew that something was wrong. Something was scaring him. It was as if he was afraid that the building itself was going to lash out and bite him.

“Edward are you okay?” Riza asked gently, seeming to notice he was off. The kid shook his head but didn’t give a verbal answer. Riza shot a gentle but stern look over towards Roy asking for his help. But he didn’t know what could possibly be wrong.

“Uh, you ready to continue the test? We have just one more building to do,” Roy said. He hoped that keeping the conversation light would distract the child from whatever was bothering him. “You have done great so far. My friend Mr. Hughes here is grateful for the tour. But we need just one more building.” Though most people thought it would have worked, Edward seemed to know better. He shook his head, not wanting to be tricked into going into the strange building. He didn’t want to go in there at all.

“I-I’m done,” Edward mumbled shakily as they approached their last building.

“We have one more, Edward,” Roy urged gently, “then that will be it. Your test will be over.” However, the boy shook his head and burrowed closer to Riza’s chest, tucking his head underneath one of her arms to shelter himself. The lieutenant was only mildly surprised by the boy’s attempts to hide and shifted around to hold him better.

“I’m not allowed in the east wing,” the boy said barely above a whisper, which was muffled into Riza’s side. Roy stopped in his tracks and looked up at the large brick building. The others stopped alongside him, wondering what made him halt.

“The east wing?” Roy asked as if he didn’t hear the boy right. He didn’t see the child nod his head, but his Lieutenant bowed hers in confirmation to what the child said. That was the building Garfiel told him to go into. The man, and now Edward, seemed to be absolutely terrified of it and Roy felt that paranoia creeping into him as well. ‘ _The people that the nurses take back there never come out.’_ Roy could hear the haunted voice of Garfiel say to him once more.

“P-please, I-I’m done,” Edward whimpered. Roy looked back up at the building and then over to his group who were all staring at its dark and looming presence. He could tell that they all were feeling the same anxiety that he was by the way they were just silently gazing.

“We have to go in there,” Maes reminded him as he saw right through his hesitation.  They couldn’t stop the inspection just because a single boy didn’t want to continue. Roy didn’t want to leave the boy behind, but he surely didn’t want to take him into whatever laid inside. He knew what he needed to do but he didn’t want to do it. Relenting to the need to see the Village’s end, Roy sighed and removed Edward from Riza’s hands. The child was overly eager to return to him, but it would not last. He motioned for his subordinate’s bag and she passed it over to him. He strung it over his shoulder awkwardly. He took a few long paces across the grass and away from the haunting building behind him. The tension in Edward’s muscles seemed to relax with every step they took away from the place. Roy made a motion for Havoc to follow behind him and the man silently obeyed. He knelt and set the small boy down on the lush grass of the lawn and the bag with him. He made sure to fold his uniform jacket tighter around the child to keep his decency before rooting through the bag and pulling out the Xingese book. The golden eyes lit up in surprise as he saw the return of his wonderful book. A sense of relief seemed to wash through him as the book was slid into his hand and he cradled it towards his chest. It seemed that Edward was afraid that Roy would have taken him into the East Wing. That was the last thing he had even considered doing.

“Jean,” Roy said as he looked up from where Edward was eagerly trying to open the book, “stay out here with Edward, we will go in.” Instead of being disappointed for being given a babysitting position, Jean looked quite relieved to not go into another horror show of a place. Roy visibly saw a sigh of relief flood out of the man as he easily sat down on the grass next to the child. Edward gave an audible gasp as he noticed the switch in care. The kid frowned at Jean as he tried to puzzle piece what was going on. Hoping to leave before he figured it out, Roy stood up as Edward’s attention was elsewhere. He didn’t get far however as a tug on his pants caused him to stop. He looked down at what had caught him up but only saw Edward’s small hand snagged around the leg of his pants. Book forgotten on the grass, golden eyes were wide and begged as they looked up at him.

“Don’t go,” Edward pleaded. It seemed that he was averse to anyone stepping near the East Ward. “I-I don’t want you to go in.” Roy felt his heart freeze over in that single moment. Was the boy afraid he wasn’t going to come out? Considering the pattern of the other patients that entered the East Wing, it was probably so.

“Edward, I have to go in-“

“No!” the child cut him off. He was stubborn and was going to fight him to stay. Roy looked back at the others. Maes gave him an urging look. Though it wasn’t impatient, he knew that they didn’t have time to waste. With a sigh, Roy reached down and grabbed Edward’s little hand and peeled it off his pant leg. He gingerly placed the forgotten book back into it, upset to find that Edward was not as enthusiastic about it as he was before. It seemed that when given the option of a priceless treasure like the book that the kid always wanted and then Roy’s presence, the child prioritized him over a book that he had been yearning to read for years.  Though he was touched down to his heart, this one time he needed the child to pick the other thing. Edward could not go with them, and Roy could not stay outside.

“I will be back,” he told him firmly, leaving no room for Edward’s fear or anxiety to build. The child seemed to want to argue but he was taken back by Roy’s absolution. There was nothing to argue about. He would return.

“Promise?” he asked softly. It was the last untied string, but he needed it. Roy nodded his head.

“I promise. I will be back, but to do that, I need to go,” he replied. Edward frowned, and his grip faltered on the book. Havoc pulled the little boy into his lap as if to be of assurance. He opened the book for the kid and pointed to one of the pages, trying to distract him. Once Edward’s attention was diverted, Roy quickly took a few steps away to get out of range of the boy’s reach. Hughes was giving him a thoughtful stare which he gratefully returned with a glare.

“Come on, let’s get this finished,” he huffed as he was about to pass but Hughes reached out his arm and stopped him gently.

“Roy, what if we can’t shut down the Village, what will you do then?” Roy froze as the man said this. He wasn’t thinking about if they failed. What if even the East Wing wasn’t enough? What would become of everyone? If they never closed the Village, the health inspection would end in failure and he would just return home like nothing happened, when in fact, it did. Roy wanted to get these imprisoned people out of there, find the help they needed. If he couldn’t do that today, he was afraid no one ever would.

“Edward’s a bright kid,” Maes said randomly. Roy raised his eyebrow confused at the context. His friend smiled tiredly back at him, the work of the day already pronouncing bags underneath his eyes. “It would be good if he had a home.” Roy glanced back at where Edward was sitting now fully absorbed in the book. He now realized that in that moment, Maes wasn’t talking about what he would do for the Village, but what he would do specifically for Edward. He groaned to himself as he brought his hands up to massage his face tiredly. Kids never liked him. He was a strict military man who didn’t know how to deal with children, only subordinates who were already grown up. Maes was a soon to be father and every bone in that man’s body was built for that. Everyone _liked_ him. No one liked Roy. Edward was one of the only children that Roy met that genuinely seemed to like him. As much as Roy appreciated Edward in return, he had not the time nor ability to take care of a child. He didn’t know where to start or even how. After they left the Village, Roy was intending to wrap up any loose ties like paperwork for getting half of the staff arrested and letters for demolition to get the buildings levelled. He was not thinking of Edward because he had not included him in the equation. The only thing he was thinking about was finding a good family to adopt him.  Roy didn’t like it that his friend was insinuating he was that family.

“Hughes-“ Roy moaned, but the man just cut him off with a meek smile before hiking up the small hill towards the East wing to avoid retort. Roy felt like a hand on his shoulder and he looked over to find Hawkeye there, expressionless as normal. He didn’t know how she did it.

“Sir, one move at a time. Let’s finish this and then go onto the next,” she said before giving him a light shove up towards the East wing. He thought he saw her glance back at Edward for a second. She probably felt the same way. But Roy didn’t know what he was supposed to feel anymore.

…….

The halls of the East wing were dimly lit with fluorescent lights. For once the floors were clean, neatly washed and waxed, making Roy’s heart drop. This didn’t seem to be anything worse than the other buildings. In fact, it was probably the best one he has seen yet. Nothing seemed to be dangerous or out of order. The only thing that offset him was the horrible stench that still hung in the air. It was different from the sewage smell of the dormitories, and it was heavily masked by a strong scent of disinfectant, but it was still there. What really put him off was the familiarity of it and yet he couldn’t put his finger on where he had smelled it before. With no obvious source in the pristine hallways, the odor was set to the back of his mind, but not forgotten.

Their small group of soldiers carefully moved around the hallways to look into each room. Their shoes squeaked against the waxed floors but the otherwise dead silence told Roy that no one else was there. All of the other buildings in the Village had some form of life in them whether it be nurses, overcrowded patients, or a mixture of the two. This place was empty but showed signs of heavy use by the maintenance of it. Maes took his time to study even the structure of the building in hopes of finding anything unsound, but this seemed to be the cleanest and strongest building they were in yet.

The first two rooms were sleeping quarters. They were much smaller than the ones in the other buildings as they only seemed to hold ten peopled each. If the East Wing was made as a dormitory, it wasn’t very efficient. Every single one of the white beds were perfectly made. No stains, no makeshifts. Roy paused in the doorway as he looked at them. Why would they keep the nice beds up here when all of the patients were down on the lower campus? Hawkeye tapped him on the shoulder and motioned for him to keep going.

All the doors in the first end of the hallway had windows on them so that the nurses could see through to make sure nothing was going wrong. In one room there was a line of bathing tubs. They were clean and held no mess in them. There were restraining covers over them to prevent rowdy patients from escaping their confines with only an odd hole for their head to stick out for air. Roy did not think anything of it until he opened up the chests along the walls to find them full of only ice. The baths were not meant to get their patients clean, but to shock sanity into them with ice water. He wondered how cold the water got in those tubs and just how long they had to stay there. He told Hughes about this but he shook his head only making a small note of it on his clipboard.  It wasn’t enough. There was a dentist chair in one rather small room with restraining cuffs for uncomplacent patients. Oddly, very few instruments were there. They opened all of the drawers in the cabinets and only found various bottles of sedative, a few empty glass jars, and one set of rusty dental tools on a battered tray. Roy would have liked to think that the room wasn’t used recently, but he knew it to be false. He looked over to Maes who was scribbling down everything that they saw but he was shaking his head again. It still wasn’t enough. They needed more.

Every room down held odd contraptions for treatment methods Roy couldn’t imagine ever working, a least not in the way the nurses had wanted them to. Spinning swings, cages, chemicals, and various restraining methods hung in every room. He saw the horror of it all through every door and window. It made him sick to his stomach but Maes just kept shaking his head. It was not enough. Not enough? Just how bad did it have to be to get a hospital to shut its doors forever?

The next door Roy found was made of solid oak. Everything beyond it was a mystery that Roy didn’t want to solve. With every disappointing horror he had seen that day, he didn’t want to see anymore that the patients would have to go through. But this could be it. This could be the one to shut down the hospital, but at what cost? He felt slight anticipation as his hand reached out for the cool knob. Though his mind suspected it to be a noteless room, possibly a storage closet, something else screamed otherwise. He opened the door to find a wall of pitch-black darkness. There were strangely no windows in it to let in the sun. Roy stepped in and fumbled around for a light switch on the wall. As he moved blindly about, he realized that the odd smell that had floated unmentioned in the hallway seemed stronger in the small confines of the strange room. It rang with a familiarity that haunted the back of Roy’s mind. The tart, rounded scent almost reminded him of formaldehyde. It was almost too strong for him. After a couple seconds, his fingers brushed against a possibly switch and he quickly flipped it on.

As the dead lights flickered alive, Roy felt every muscle, every cell in his being tense and freeze as if they were set to absolute zero. He regretted opening the door. He regretted turning on the light. Shelves lined the walls of the small rooms and each one was stacked full of liquid filled jars. A hand flew up to his speechless mouth as he felt his mind go dizzy. He stumbled backwards out of the room and quickly turned away as if that would make him forget, but it was permanently stained to his memory.

“Sir!” Hawkeye’s alert voice exclaimed as she stopped her own search upon seeing him. She rushed over to him, but Roy’s knees already were giving out on him. “Sir, pull yourself together! What-“ she started to scold him. Roy almost didn’t recognize her voice. The hysteria that was filling his mind left no room to process the outside world apart from what he had just seen. His muscles quaked, his limbs shook, but his eyes were locked steadily on the contents of the storage closet he had walked into. His mouth trembled as he tried to force out words to explain what he had found, but no words came to him. No words could come to him as he had figured out the purpose of the East Wing, and the Heissgart Village as a whole. And the truth horrified him.

He knew why every patient was afraid of the East Wing. There was a reason why no one ever came out of there. The jars he had found inside of the closet were in fact full of formaldehyde like he had guessed. The yellowed liquid gave a haunting glow as the light bulbs had flickered to life to reveal what was trapped in their forever preserving substance. Inside the jars were the labelled brains, teeth, and eyes of the past patients. The nurses were experimenting on their patients. They were studying them and dissecting them to find the reason they were impaired. They seemed to have been trying to find the cause of their malfunction. It might have been justified by the nurses as an attempt to find a possible cure, but it was torture to the patients. They were farming them for reasons of clinical science. Roy couldn’t imagine all the people who walked into the east wing, not knowing what was to become of them. To be placed in finally livable conditions just to have their actual lives taken.

Roy felt his stomach churn once more and he finally gave up on trying to hold it in. A weight laid gently on his back and he knew it was Riza by her strong calming presence but he couldn’t process anything else. Roy looked at his hands to try and focus on something to calm himself. They were shaking; fear, disgust, he didn’t know which was more prominent, but he couldn’t keep them down. He clenched them and unfolded them, then did it again. The more he focused, the more his breathing relaxed and the more he heard his subordinate’s voice come through the veil of terror that had surrounded him. He heard a quiver in Riza’s usually calm voice. She was struggling to keep herself together. She could see what he saw and it broke her tough demeanor. At that moment, Roy knew that they had seen enough of the Heissgart Village to shut it down permanently. No trial needed. They had succeeded, but at what cost? They were hoping for more evidence, but the reality was too cruel and disgusting for them to fathom.

“W-we should continue,” he heard Maes mutter. His voice was strangled as he too had trouble even finding the words for what he had seen. Roy looked up to see him close the door to the storage room behind him. The clipboard was dangling loosely from his hands as all of the strength had left him. “We need to finish the inspection,” he finished finally, as if concluding the room’s search would put it into the past. Riza, the strongest in the group, pulled Roy to his feet. He wobbled slightly as he felt his legs shake underneath him. He gave himself a moment to steady himself before attempting a step down the hall. His entire body screamed at him to go the other way. It was like a magnetic force was fighting against him from going, but he forced himself through. They had started something they needed to finish. There was no way they could have just walked back now. The three of them staggered down the hallway to the deeper abyss of the east wing. What on earth would they find in these new depths of hell?

Horror after horror revealed itself behind every door. It was beyond what the human mind could have imagined. Roy once had liked to think acts like this was beyond a human’s capacity to understand.  How these atrocities could have been committed with no sense of remorse, was a mystery. They found several rooms that held chairs with lashes on them as if making sure their prey didn’t run away. Needles were full of unlabeled medicines ready for testing and there were many tools Roy couldn’t imagine the use for still covered in grime from their last subjects. He thought he had seen enough. From the first room, Roy wanted to stop and turn around but they had to keep going. It wasn’t until the final room that they finally reached the end of their road and the end of human decency.

 Bodies. Dead bodies of headless patients were piled on the floor of the morgue because there wasn’t enough room to store them in the freezers. Their rotting stench filled the room and suffocated the investigators with the smell of decay. Flies buzzed around the room like an infectious disease and stirred the odor to new heights. Hawkeye refused to step into the room after seeing the mangled bodies of the poor long gone patients and a few of the other men didn’t get past the smell. Though Roy knew she wasn’t the most superstitious person, he wasn’t going to push her. It was a horrible sight which no one needed to see.

He and Maes risked their stomachs and their peace of mind to go farther into the room. There was a cremator, but it seemed long out of use. It probably broke down from lack of care, or in the least, a work overload. Roy inspected the strange device from its odd buttons to combustible gas. Surely if a match were to be striked in that room they would all have been blown to smithereens as the putrefied remains built up their bodily gasses. Scratches and dents were marked on the interior of the machine which was odd as the bodies should have slid easily in. The scene was as if the cadavers were trying to claw their way out while the machine was burning them. Disgusted, Roy didn’t doubt it. He could nearly hear their screams whispering in his ears.

“I am going to call for back up. We are good now. It’s over,” Maes’ muffled voice said suddenly in the silence. Roy looked over to see his friend breathing into his sleeve to mask the scent from his finely tuned nostrils. He didn’t judge, he was doing the same thing.

“We might have succeeded,” Roy huffed, “But we are far from done.”

…….


	4. Blank

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They recover after the East Ward but Roy now has many more problems he has to deal with. Where are the patients going to go and why do Lieutenant Hawkeye and Lt. Col. Hughes keep asking him the same questions?

**_The Cripple_ **

Chapter 4

Blank

The warmth of the sunlight on his face was bliss. Roy felt like he didn’t feel it in ages. He gulped in the fresh air and felt like he was breathing for the first time. Maes and Riza staggered out of the East wing behind him, each with ghosts in their eyes from all that they have seen. They figured out the truths behind the Village and had seen the horrifying skeletons it kept in its closet. They knew what was to become of the patients had they failed, and they put a stop to it. However, their victory was feeling less and less fulfilling as they realized that their simple battle over humane treatment, turned into a battle over life and death. It seemed something out of a fiction novel that should have never come to life. It was now more than ever Roy wished that it was just a simple health inspection.

Leaving the East Wing, each one of them looked like they were going to be sick. Death loomed over them and Roy wouldn’t have been surprised if they all just keeled over then. He felt dead inside as the emotional trauma of the place had numbed all of his nerves. He walked on autopilot, sure that his body would fail him at any second. When it did, he would either fall over or break down crying. Everyone behind him seemed to figure out what theirs would be.

As Roy’s mind leaped back and forth from the lush green grass and sunlight to the dark and dismal hallways of the East Wing, he heard a voice speaking in strange tongues across the lawn. He looked up and blinked the blinding light out of his eyes to see a small golden-haired child sitting on one of his subordinate’s laps with a book propped open in front of him. It was Edward and Jean. They were talking lightly, small unworried smiles on both of their faces as they were completely oblivious to the world inside of the East Wing. Roy smiled as he saw the laughing grins on both of their faces. His heart lifted at the sight of an innocent face once again. As he looked at Edward he wanted to blissfully believe that the world was as good as any child thought it was. He wanted to be naïve to the horrible struggles and realities that life created for them, but he couldn’t. The more he looked at Edward, the more he saw the child’s little form sitting in one of the chairs in the East Wing, in the morgue, or the grave. If they didn’t shut down the Village, he would have ended up there like the rest of the patients. He would have been harvested like a living crop and then forgotten in the history books like a weak gust of wind.

Roy bit his lip hard as he tried hard to push his mind to other places. He pushed and shoved until he broke free from a shackle of the East Wing with another sound of Edward’s childish voice. He looked up again and saw him try to pronounce one of the words in the book he was reading. Though the horrors of the East Wing were what caused the Villagers much suffering and fear, they ended it right? Though his body was still trembling from his encounter with hell, though he knew he would never be able to shake off what he saw, Roy knew that they were the last ones to go into that place. They would be able to shut the Village down, relocate everyone to new homes, clean homes. Edward wouldn’t have to be afraid of the East wing ever again. He could keep on smiling. And it was that smile that made Roy continue to walk on.

“ _Knee…. How,”_ Roy heard Edward mumble as he approached the two. The boy was already learning some of the Xingese in the book. They were simple phrases, but Roy had to give him credit since he only got the book a few hours ago. “ _Nihao,”_ he repeated the Xingese with finality. Edward gasped slightly as he saw Roy’s shadow come over him and he spun around in Havoc’s lap with a huge grin on his face.

“You’re back! How did you come back?” he asked him and nearly fell over trying to reach him. Roy walked over and scooped him off the ground, holding him close. He hugged the child like it was the last day on earth. Though Edward only had one hand, he returned it and it was the strongest that he had felt in years. Roy felt the weight of the Village lift off his shoulders for a few seconds as they held the grateful gesture. He didn’t realize how much he needed it until that moment.

“I promised I would,” Roy said. The boy ignored the feebleness of his answer and exited the hug with a smile. The smile on his face was sunshine and warmed the heart in his chest that seemed lost until that moment. Roy couldn’t believe that that amount of innocence was still existent in the world. He felt blessed to witness it.

“You don’t have to go now, do you?” Edward excitedly ask as he knew that their investigation was at its close. but suddenly he stopped as if a silent force was calling him and he twisted around to look at Maes who was standing only a few feet away from them. The man was white as a sheet and his chest was heaving as he tried to fight back tears. His teeth were bearing down on his whitened knuckles as he tried his best not to cry out. He was stifling the water that was quickly building behind his eyes and Roy knew that something in him had shattered back in the East Wing though he didn’t know what. Maes was trying to put himself together but the pieces were scattered back in the filthy hallways of the Village, and hung up on every note they had scratched down on their clipboards.  But rebuilding was not something he could do by simply standing there and shoving back his distress because he was in uniform and it looked unprofessional. Riza had a hand to his back and was trying to comfort him but the tears were relentless and came anyway. Roy wished he had seen to his friend sooner, but he was still trying to understand how he had changed himself. Because he felt like he was a far different man than the one who had walked into the Village that morning and he didn’t even have his afternoon tea yet.

Without warning, Maes’ arms engulfed Edward and stole him from Roy’s grasp. The child looked startled as he was taken away and Roy felt an internal surge of protectiveness overwhelm him. He wanted to fight his friend to let the child go, but he knew that Maes was not the person to do anything dangerously brash. The man held onto Edward as tightly as he could, in a hug that didn’t seem to be breaking any time soon. Maes sobbed into the crook of Edward’s neck who looked both very frightened and confused at the man’s strong and unexplained emotions. Edward patted the statue of the man on the head gently though he didn’t know what else there was he could do to remedy the ailment that had befallen their friend. Maes was an emotional character but seldom did Roy see him like this. In all his life Roy only saw the man break out in tears of joy after he got married and then after he found out he was going to be a father. Now they looked to be of heart break and sorrow, and Roy didn’t know what the cause of them was. After a few awkward moments where the little boy was trapped in the clutches of the loving man, Maes finally loosened up a bit as if all of his built-up energy was finally drained. Riza quickly took Edward from the man’s faltering hold, slightly afraid that he was going to be dropped. She took him a few paces a way to let the man get his space.

“Maes,” Roy said softly, not knowing what came over his best friend. The man wiped his eyes. He was trying to hold out.

“Roy,” the man choked, looking at him apologetically. Roy still saw the haunted ghosts behind the man’s eyes from all that he saw. “I a-am going to be a father, Roy. M-my child is going t-to be born into this world.”

The man was afraid for all that he saw. He was afraid of his child growing up in a place where this type of thing existed, where the types of people who commit these crimes existed. While Roy was relieved to see Edward and the joy on the boy’s face, Hughes was shocked knowing that he would have a little fragile ball of innocence for his own in only a month. Roy couldn’t imagine the panic he would be in if he actually had a boy of his own. Simply imagining what would have come of Edward if he stayed there was nearly enough to break him. If they couldn’t shut down the Village, the small ball of sunshine could have ended up in the East wing himself. Roy paled even at the thought of such thing. For Maes to have seen that and to imagine his prospective child there? Though Roy couldn’t relate to Hughes since he wasn’t a father, he knew the terror the man must have felt in that moment. 

“No, Maes, they aren’t,” Roy stopped the man, placing both of his hands on his friend’s shoulders to try and ground him. “You child is going to be born into a different world, a better one, because by the time we leave here it is going to be different. It will be changed.” The man seemed to be comforted by this idea and weakly nodded. But Roy didn’t know how much of what he said was true. He didn’t know how many evils existed on the planes of the Earth. What they saw today could have just been the first layer of a dangerous tower, but at least they took care of it. It was one less horror the world and its people had to endure. So even if it was one in a many, the world would be different, even by a little bit.

It took a while for Maes to regain himself but they all waited patiently on the lush green lawn. They all felt like they deserved a breather after seeing what they did. Even a few minutes gave them enough time to push the darkest of the clouds away and focus their attention elsewhere. Roy could see Maes’ mind wandering towards the logistics of their next steps in closing the Village doors for good. He was always one step ahead of everyone, two if he was passionate about his cause. In this case he was three. He already had all the phone numbers and request forms in his head and spinning around. Roy half expected him to jump in one of the vehicles and drive back to Eastern Command himself to grab everything and everyone he needed.

Roy on the other hand did not have the ability to fuel his mental breakdowns into energy for work. He had to calm them down quietly and with time. He chose to spend those few minutes of their break with Edward who was busy trying to get him to talk about his favorite animal. Thinking about random topics like that, made Roy’s thoughts stray away from the horrors of the East wing. He was overly grateful for Edward’s conversation and the fact that his smile was near contagious.

“I would say a dog,” Roy mused as he thought about his favorite animal in favor of all the other horrible thoughts his mind wanted to wander towards. Roy didn’t know what his favorite animal was. He guessed it was a dog because he always wanted one when he was little. Edward nodded his head and readily accepted the answer as he didn’t know Roy’s internal conflict.

“Birds,” Edward replied with his own. Roy was rather surprised. He would have expected Edward to like something larger than a little bird.

“Why do you like birds?” Roy questioned curiously. Edward bit his lip in thought however Roy could see he already knew his answer. However, before he could respond, Roy heard bells chime out across the grass from the bell tower that hung in the admissions building. 

 “What’s going on?” he heard Hawkeye suddenly ask. Roy looked up from his conversation with Edward and saw that the green lawn was being flooded with people walking up from the lower buildings.  As the bells rung, people were flooding out of the lower buildings and up the lawn. The patients, all completely bare, walked, staggered, or even crawled up the green towards the main building. They appeared like ants marching out of an ant hill. Some of the adults were helping the children who couldn’t walk and had trouble, but even then Roy saw that there were still some kids, like Edward, left without aid. There was a morbid taste to the air and it seemed that even Edward didn’t like it. The boy curled up slightly and clung to Roy’s arms.

 “I-It’s dinner,” the boy mumbled. Roy remembered the boy explaining that the nurses had told everyone to stay in their lower dorms until dinner. Edward meekly waved at some of the people as they passed and some of them quietly returned the gesture. Roy thought there was something odd about the way they did it. Though they were now free to move about, they all still marched like they were condemned to die. Other than the fresh air, the patients didn’t look like they had another reason to want to get out of the dormitories. The four soldiers stood there and watched them slowly enter the building and disappear. As the majority of the group left the grounds, they started to gather themselves to return to the mission at hand. They had a lot of work to do, even more now with all that they found. They did not have time to idle around anymore. As they started to walk back up towards the main building, Roy heard an angry growl come from the child sitting in his arms.

“Whoa, was that his stomach? I thought a bear must have been released or something,” Havoc joked as they all were a little startled by the sudden loud noise. Edward subconsciously held his hand to his stomach to cover up his embarrassment.

“Are you hungry, Edward?” Roy asked him, but the boy quickly shook his head.

“No,” he answered but his stomach betrayed him and gave another howl. Edward clutched it tighter and scolded it quietly under his breath for speaking up.

“Are you sure?” Havoc questioned but he just got a nod as a reply.

“Full.” Roy frowned slightly. The boy was obviously hungry. He had missed lunch that day because the nurses. Even then, the answer for breakfast was unknown. With everything that Roy was doing, he hadn’t considered getting anything for him to eat. Hell, he realized even he was hungry himself.  The kid was abnormally small even for his age. He was to the point of being bony and Roy did not think his body could handle missing another meal. Roy didn’t understand why the kid would lie about being hungry. Any boy would be tackling food whenever it was available.

“Edward, I know you are lying,” Roy replied sternly. Edward looked away in shame as he didn’t want to admit that he had lied. The pout on Edward’s face could have been called cute, but Roy did not want to allow it to stay if it meant denying the boy some food. He had looked to Hughes for some help, but the man still looked rather distressed and he thought it better not to bother him more than necessary. It had taken a while to calm the man down from his hysteria and Roy didn’t want to upset him again.

“Do you want to change your answer?” Roy asked him calmly, though he still held a serious tone. Edward’s pout only grew larger, but his golden eyes flicked up towards him for only a split second. It seemed just long enough for guilt to set in and the kid squirmed around not liking the feeling at all.

“I-I am only slightly hungry,” the boy muttered underneath his breath. His stomach growled again, and he groaned with it in annoyance, angry at it because it was so loud. Roy laughed lightly as Havoc opened the admissions door to let them in. Hawkeye made a beeline for the nearest phone to call the General while Havoc and Hughes started for the offices. But, Hughes pulled him off to the side.

“Roy, I am going to get the doctors to hand over the patient files so we can get some background on everyone’s situation. You should get the boy something to eat. I don’t know how long it will take for the trucks to get here so it might be a while until they can eat anything else. Make sure everyone gets at least something,” he ordered him.

“You should go into town and get some food for yourself and everyone else,” Roy told him, but his friend only laughed.

“And miss out on my wife’s dinner? Though it will undoubtedly be cold when I get home, there is nothing in the world that would make me miss it,” Hughes smirked at him. “I will send Riza down the hill to see if she can pick up something for herself and Jean. No point in everyone going hungry.” Maes turned back towards the offices and disappeared through the doors. Roy stood watching where he had gone. Maes loved his wife’s cooking, Roy knew, but he also knew that it could be a rather long time till they return home. After what they saw in the East Ward, even Roy had found his appetite to be missing. He didn’t many of them would eat well for a while. Maes probably knew that already.

 As Roy snapped himself out of his thoughts he looked around. The hallway was left silent and Roy studied the pristine walls. He had come here imagining it to be a good thing, how clean the building was. Now it just mocked him like a fake defensive mask ready to crumple. The Village, now stripped of its façade, was going to burn. As Roy reflected all that they uncovered and the success that they had in shutting the village down, he felt himself grow suddenly tired and wished nothing more than to drop what he was doing and go home with a large bottle of scotch. The stakes of victory was too high and too sudden. Like Maes, he wanted to go home.  But he knew rest would not come until the nightmares were snuffed out at the source. He would not leave the Village until it was a smoldering pile of only memories and even those would burn. The only way he would let himself get some rest was when he saw every patient walk out of there. He couldn’t leave Edward alone here like this, nor any of the other kids. The scotch would have to wait.

“Come on, let’s get you some food,” he huffed lightly to the child in his arms who seemed oblivious to his tormented state. How he loved the child’s naivety.

The cafeteria held a completely different air to it than the first time he went in there. Instead of having calm patients waiting peacefully for their meal, it was instant chaos. The room was packed full of naked bodies some who were sitting in chairs at the tables, others on the floor with their trays in their laps. Moans and cries consumed the air and made Roy’s ears sore. The patients tipped their trays of unidentifiable mashed food on the floor or on themselves. Nurses were quickly going around to help hand out medicine as well as feed the patients who couldn’t use silverware. Edward held on tighter to Roy’s jacket the farther they made it into the room. He looked scared, but Roy gave him a reassuring squeeze. Even though Roy wanted to take Edward out of there the instant he stepped foot into the room, he knew he could not. Edward needed to eat, and he will make sure he got dinner some way or another. Roy caught sight of Garfiel who was waving at them from a rather crowded table. The man surprisingly pulled out a chair for them and Roy quickly rushed to get it, afraid that someone else might decide to occupy it.

"Don't worry, we have assigned seating,"Garfiel told him as he saw his rush. "It's to help with the medicine distribution."

"Well that makes sense for once," he mumbled as he situated Edward on his lap. There was a tray of food already in front of them full of grounded up mush. He assumed it was potatoes and broccoli, but he couldn’t be quite sure. It made Roy's insides churn looking at it. As he wondered why anyone could eat this for days on end, he quickly saw that not one of the patients wanted to. Some were splattering it all over the table to get rid of it, others were trying to shove it on the floor. Nurses were rushing around trying to race around and feed all the patients as fast as possible to keep them from upsetting their trays. Even Edward was squirming around in his lap and attempting to slide underneath the table to get away. Roy hoisted him back up, struggling to keep him from falling off his lap.

"Edward, sit still," he grumbled as the kid tried to push him away. The boy's tiny hand smashed his face again as he tried to get him off.

"Not hungry," Edward lied again. Roy gave the kid a light prod in the ribs making him whine.

"What did I say to you about lying?" he scolded him, pinning the boy to his chest with one arm to stop his efforts of escape. The boy whined but he couldn't budge Roy's arms. After he calmed down, seeing that struggle was pointless, Roy placed the large silver spoon into the boy's only hand. The kid looked cautiously at it for a moment and then up at Roy as if slightly shocked. It was more of surprise than anything else, however Roy couldn't tell why. In a few seconds the look faded and the boy dropped the spoon to the table with a chink. He was doing all he could not to touch the plate in front of him. Roy, keeping the boy pinned to his chest, picked up the spoon and placed it back into his hands, giving him another look of surprise which lasted only slightly shorter than the first one before the spoon was dropped yet again. The boy slid his hand off the table and pinned it underneath his thigh to keep it away from the spoon.

"Edward, come on," Garfiel prodded as he tried to help. The naked man tried to bring Edward's hand back to the table but the boy fought and it wouldn't budge.

"Why won't he eat?" Roy asked. The man sighed and dropped his efforts pathetically.

"It isn't his fault, not really. He doesn't know how to use silverware even though I try every day to teach him. He just refuses to eat."

"But why? How does he eat then?" 

"Well, you see, within the first few days of him coming here there was-“ Garfiel tried to explain but they were suddenly cut off from a loud clatter behind them. Roy turned in his seat to see one of the patients collapsed to the floor. There was a nurse standing over her to help but he was flustering to get her back up. Roy thought she was having a tantrum fit but then he saw how she was writhing on the ground with her hands around her throat. She was choking. Roy bolted up, nearly tossing Edward on top of Garfiel as he hurried and shoved the quite useless nurse out of the way. He grabbed the girl from under the arms and heaved her into a sitting position. She weakly struggled as Roy wrapped his arms around her, pressing into her diaphragm, and heaved. The room was silent and watched in rigid suspense as Roy kept heaving. Suddenly the girl doubled over coughing a spray of food clearing out of her airways. Tears, snot, and drool were strewed down her face as she breathed in the cool air and Roy leaned back in relief. The girl began to cry as a fellow patient came over to comfort her. A near death experience wasn't anything to be taken lightly.

"Why were you just standing there?" Roy mumbled as the girl was helped back into her seat. The nurse looked down at him, still in shock by what happened. Roy frowned, and his brow furrowed. He stood up and grabbed the man by the collar of his neatly pressed shirt. "Why were you just standing there? Why didn't you help her?" he yelled.

"I-I," the man stumbled. He was shaking terribly, and Roy suddenly noticed that he was holding a spoon splattered with food in his right hand. He snatched the man's wrist and examined it for a second. With as many people in the cafeteria as there was, the staff was speeding through feeding them. They either ate their food, or had it shoved down their throats in seconds. He doubted that a patient choking on it was an uncommon occurrence. Yet though this fact alone was horrifying, what terrified Roy the most was that the nurse didn't even know the basic first aid. He couldn't even help the poor girl if he tried. If this was not the reason why Edward did not want to eat, the fear of choking and dying on his food like so many others, Roy knew it at least fueled his reluctance. Roy felt anger boil inside him and he glared at the nurse with his most threatening look.

“Get out,” he hissed under his breath. The nurse swallowed hesitantly an looked at him as if he didn’t understand what he meant.

“Wh-what?” he nervously chuckled but Roy shoved him roughly towards the doors of the cafeteria so hard that the man tripped and fell on his ass. The look of utter shock would have made Roy laugh in any other circumstance but not this one.

“Get out if you fucking know what is good for you!” Roy bellowed. The nurse, terrified for his life, scampered up and out of the room. Roy watched the door swing shut, closing off the silence of the room. Seeing that he was gone, he let out a hot breath to cool off his anger and turned back towards the little girl again. He knelt to where she was sitting curled up in her seat. Her body was trembling, and tears still stained her face but luckily it seemed she was calming down. Roy smiled gently up at her and reached a hand out to her but she whimpered and flinched away from him causing Roy to withdraw.

“Are you okay?” he asked her quietly. She stared at him for a long time but numbly nodded her head. That answer was the best he could get and he did not challenge her for more. He reached over and placed a spoon that rested discarded on the table into her own hand. Her eyes widened, like Edward’s had, as Roy was giving her the power to feed herself.

“I know it is scary, but after dinner, everyone is going to go on a big trip and they need to eat to keep their strength up. I need you to eat your dinner, alright?” he told her calmly.

“A-a-ight,” she whispered in a ragged voice, mispronouncing her words but still able to get the point across. One of the older patients beside her thanked him deeply and guided the young girl back to her plate and encouraged her to eat. Others around them started to question him about the trip and where it was to, but Roy knew he could not answer them. If he told all the patients, there would be panic and hysteria. He needed all the patients to cooperate with him. The best he could do is encourage them where he could. It seemed like telling one of the nurses off was enough to settle most of the patients down.

Roy looked back to Edward who was staring at him with wide unblinking eyes. It was then that he realized that the boy never saw him yell at anyone before. Roy was angry at the nurse but he felt like he was withholding most of the anger he wanted to unleash onto the careless caretaker. Edward watched him carefully as he returned to his seat. Roy massaged his face tiredly as he realized he probably just scared away the one child that liked him. Before meeting Edward, Roy wouldn’t have thought much of it. It was normal for children to fear him. But now, he couldn’t imagine the little boy hating him. He didn’t want Edward to be frightened of him. He wanted to continue to have those random conversations about favorite animals. He wanted to continue to help Edward read even though he didn’t know all the words himself. He wanted to keep him smiling. But after his outburst at the nurse, he was probably the most terrifying thing in the room to him aside from the nurse himself.

He was considering apologizing to Edward, if at least to see if it was truly fear he felt, but it turned out he didn’t have to. In an instant, Roy felt his forearm scooped up and pinned. He looked down to see Edward gratefully hugging the only part of him he could reach with his one arm. He held on desperately as if he never wanted to let go. That Roy understood then that Edward was not afraid of him, he thought he was his hero. Edward was terrified of the nurses. Ever since Roy met him, the child had been afraid to be caught by any of the workers there. They probably did may indescribable things to him. Now, Roy had chased one of them off and saved a patient from their horrible treatment as well. Edward probably saw may people choke on their food, but he probably never saw one survive. Edward thought he had protected him.

With immense difficulty, Roy pulled Edward back into the comfort of his lap and cradled him for a few moments. Garfiel did not fight to hold him, he let him go, knowing that Edward did not want to be separated. Edward’s grip around his arm was strong but after a short while of Roy holding him there, it loosened up. The child did not verbally thank him, and Roy did not expect him to. The braver look in his eyes was enough for him. After a few moments, Roy felt a tap on his shoulder and looked over to see Garfiel waiting for him.

 “What is this trip everyone’s asking about?” the man asked him by leaning in to keep his voice down. Roy listened around the room to the murmured conversation of the patients beneath the subtle moans and unintelligible screaming. They were gossiping about the trip Roy had told the little girl about. He meant it to encourage the girl to finish her dinner, but it was nonetheless true. After dinner when the trucks got to the Heissgart Village from Eastern Command, all the patients would be going on a trip to East City hospital where they would be cared for until they found new places for them all to go. Though Roy didn’t want to tell everyone in fear of causing a riot, it seemed word of the mysterious trip had already gotten around one way or another. Looking into Garfiel’s devoted eyes, he knew that the man deserved to know. He was the person who had helped him out in his inspection. He answered all the questions he asked, not matter how painful the answers were. Roy knew that he could at least tell Garfiel this.

“We did it,” was all Roy said in reply, but it was enough for the man. Several emotions spread through Garfiel’s face and contorted it into something beautifully ugly. Tears began to overflow the man’s eyes and in seconds he was a bawling mess. It was loud, it was hideous, but it made Roy realize all that they were doing. They were setting these people free. Garfiel had been locked in the Village for almost twenty years now. He had not seen the outside world since he was a teenager. The joy that he must have felt in that moment, realizing that he was free to leave, was released all at once in an ugly mess of snot and tears. It was the most beautiful thing Roy had ever seen and it brought a smile to his face. He patted the man’s shoulder gently but in an instant, he was scooped up in a hug. Garfiel pinned him in a bone crushing hug which Edward was unfortunately a part of by circumstance. The child whined as he was pinned between the two of them and Roy had to push Garfiel off for the boy’s sake more than his own.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” was all Garfiel could say. Tears were streaming down Garfiel's face and he cried and he furiously tried to wipe them away but to no prevail. The little boy who sat in Roy’s lap seemed confused by the sudden wave of emotion that was flying out of his friend like a tidal wave.

Wh-what trip?" Edward asked him.

"We are going to go on a trip, Edward," he told him. “After dinner we are going to go somewhere nice, all of us. But you need to eat your food to keep up your strength.” The boy frowned slightly, his eyes set wide as if he was deep in thought.

"We are..... leaving?" he muttered to himself. A smile flickered on his face like it didn’t have enough energy to stay but was too strong to be simply blown out. Was the boy conflicted about leaving? He guessed Edward never considered leaving the Village a reality. He must not have believed it to be true. Edward has been in the Village for only two years but for a child so young, that must have seemed like an eternity. Did he even remember what the outside world looked like? Did he miss his family where ever they were? Garfiel had mentioned how Edward physically couldn’t talk about his family or any time before the Village. Now he was heading right back into it, head on, without any conditioning. That must have been scary for him, but hopefully it was for the better. No, Roy knew it was for the best.

"Do you want to go?" Roy asked him, and Edward furiously nodded his head to not allow any room for argument. He wanted to leave badly. Roy smiled as he pulled the tray of mushed food closer and picked up the spoon and handed it to Edward. "Well, come on, you are going to have to finish eating before we go on this adventure." Edward looked apprehensive towards the silverware but after some internal conflict, took the spoon cautiously as if it was going to bite him. He looked back and forth between the spoon and the food for quite a long time but eventually it dropped into the mush filled tray.

……..

Edward looked terribly drowsy as Roy held him gently in the cafeteria. Roy knew that he needed to go and help Maes and the rest of his team with the arrival of the Eastern troops, but he did not have the heart to move Edward from the restful state he was in. The boy’s head rested heavily on his chest and his eyes kept fluttering closed though it seemed the kid was trying to fight sleep as much as he could. Roy sighed as he continued to wipe off the rest of the mush that Edward spilt on himself with a napkin he found in the far depths of the kitchen. Though Edward did manage to get a substantial amount of food into him, he had most of the tray splattered across his face and chest. It was his first time using silverware and Roy didn't want to help him unless needed. He let the boy do it by himself even though he ended up using his hand when he became too frustrated. Roy was cleaning most of his meal off him anyways. However, Edward looked so proud of himself for having used silverware, even in the minimal sense. It was an accomplishment, a feat. However, Roy could still tell, if it wasn't detrimental to their leaving, Edward wouldn't have touched his food in the first place which really frightened him. If no one pushed the kid to eat, the boy would surely starve himself.

The little child in his lap let out a huge yawn as his head slumped against Roy's chest, his eyes fluttering slightly. Roy jumped a little bit at the sudden thump of the kid’s head but soon relaxed seeing what happened. Food mixed with the events of a long day were the worst combinations if someone wanted to stay awake.

"You tired?" Roy asked as he pulled his coat a little bit tighter against the naked child. He wished that they could have brought clothes for all the patients, but their main priority was to get them out of there. The boy shook his head just before another yawn escaped him. Roy rolled his eyes and pulled Edward a little tighter to him. "Sure you are," he breathed. It was a late evening and the boy had quite a long day. He was surprised he lasted this long. The kid was an energetic ball of fire but now he was quickly burning out for the evening. Roy stifled a yawn and massaged his face as he slumped down in his chair, careful not to jar the boy too much.

"Sir," he heard Hawkeye's voice say. He didn't even notice her come into the cafeteria area let alon approach him as he looked up to find the woman right in front of him. He put his finger to his lips to signal that the boy was sleeping and she nodded in acknowledgment.

“Are the trucks here?” Roy asked quietly. He had told the nurses to keep the patients organized in here. It would be a lot easier to take account of all of the people as well as load them into the vehicles if they were all in one place. Garfiel along with a few of the other capable patients had taken to helping the nurses and keeping all of the other patients calm. Roy was going to help him but the rather gentle man just told him to take care of Edward.

 _‘It’s a long day. Even a high Colonel needs a rest.’_ The man had told him. Roy wanted to counter but he could see in the man’s eyes that there was no room to argue. He was too grateful for what he had done to let him keep running himself into the ground. Roy was very appreciative for it and even had to admit that the rest was desperately needed. Even Edward could account to that.

Riza shook her head at his question and gently took the seat next to him. Roy was very taken back as she had removed some of her professional behavior in this small instance. It meant that it was not work related. It meant that she was extremely serious, and he had to listen. "Sir," she repeated this time so soft it was nearly a lullaby, "might I have a word with you?"

"Of course, Lieutenant," he said as he was put on alert. There was a short moment of silence as Riza stared at both Edward and him as if taking in the picture of them. Edward's golden eyes were now completely shut, and the only sign of life was the faint rise and fall of his chest. Roy had his arms wrapped around the boy's waist, making sure that he didn't slide off his lap and keeping his jacket securely around him to make the boy somewhat decent. She shook her head for a second and then looked straight into Roy's eyes.

"Sir, I.... wanted to know what you were planning to do after we took everyone back to headquarters-"

"A shit ton of paperwork after this," Roy chuckled lightheartedly but that only earned him a stern look from Riza as he had sworn in front of Edward. Roy closed his mouth quickly and returned his gaze to the floor. He didn’t know what Riza was trying to ask him. Hughes had asked previously what he was going to do if they failed to close the Village, not for his sake, but for Edward's. What would happen to the boy when this was all over? He had the deepest feeling that was also the context in which Hawkeye was asking him now. However, to both questions he didn't have an answer. He didn't know. He suspected the boy would be reunited with his family once they had the files or adopted in a home that would care for him. He wasn't quite sure which, but either was preferable if he didn't send the kid back off to another hospital like this.

"I am sorry sir, but...," she stumbled as if hesitating whether to continue or not. Roy raised his eyebrow, urging her on but he wasn't quite sure whether he wanted to hear what she had to say. Hawkeye shook her head and straightened herself out. "Sir, we have been talking and though it has only been a day, ... You have given this boy more than he could ever dreamed of, I believe. I see the smile on his face and... at the same time I see the exact same on your face too. I... I am sorry, sir, I just... wanted to tell you that."

Roy looked down for a minute and stared at the peaceful boy in his lap as he realized what they were insinuating. Now he was asking some random deity out there why he had to meet the little boy on the lawn. Roy didn't like kids for the soul reason that none of them liked him. They were always frightened of a military man, even just the way he held himself. But Edward... wasn't. Roy didn't know quite what happened but since he found the kid just several hours ago he didn't want to put him down. It would be like losing something he never had before. And it seemed like, whether Edward considered him as a new friend, or protector, he didn't want to leave either.

However, time with the boy was running out fast, as everyone was starting to realize. Now, Maes and Riza were pushing him for answers to questions he was so conflicted over. They were asking him to do something so rash. He couldn't do it. Though he surely had the space for him, and the resources, he couldn't take Edward home with him. Roy shook his head and massaged his face one more time as he tried to brush all the terrible confusion out of his mind.

"Hawkeye, why do you have to be so blunt?" he mumbled tiredly.

"Well, sir, what are you going to do?" she pushed him again.

"I-I can’t. Hawkeye, I just can’t. I can’t take care of a kid! I have never done it before. I have a job. I don’t have time. I could see Hughes doing this, but do you just expect me to-"

"I expect you to weigh your options,” she replied stiffly and logically, “and make the right decision when the time comes. But sir, weight all of Edward’s options too.” Roy frowned and looked away from her. He was too scared of the burden he had gotten himself into. He can either continue to carry it, or drop it off for the next person. He was too scared to make that decision because he knew that he couldn’t have both.

Suddenly, there was a bright stream of light the flooded and shifted through the windows that lead to the front lawn. A low growing rumble filled the air as vehicles pulled into the small road. They watched the lights until they stopped and parked. Riza let out a tired sigh as she, with too much effort, pushed herself from her seat. Roy saw the instant transition she went through back into her professional mask. It was all business from here on out.

“I am going to start directing them. Colonel, you go to the offices and help Maes get the owners and managers either on board or not.”

“Ma’am, I could help get the children into the vehicles if you need,” Roy heard the familiar voice of Garfiel say behind him. He looked over to see the eagerness in the naked man’s eyes to get out of the Village once and for all. Riza smiled at him kindly and nodded.

“That would be appreciated. Havoc will be in to help,” she before turning back to Roy. “Colonel,” she said stiffly to get him back to work. Roy sighed as he looked down at the sleeping boy in his arms. He closed his eyes as he realized his time with Edward was finally ending. He would have to say goodbye.

“Give me a minute,” Roy muttered and Riza slowly nodded her head acceptingly and left them in peace. Roy watched her disappear through the doors of the cafeteria as Garfiel sat down next to him. Roy frowned as he looked back at Edward and steeled himself to wake the kid up and tell him the news. He gave Edward a small prod in the ribs and the boy's dreary eyes opened a sliver. A yawn broke out of the kid's pouting mouth as he was upset to have been woken.

"Edward, the trucks are here. We are leaving," he told him. With only a tiny bit more energy, the boy curiously sat up and looked out into the evening which was lit up by the headlights. A small smile formed across his face as wonder took to the boy's eyes.

"Really?" the boy breathed excitement framing his tired words.

“Yes,” Roy said finding a small sad smile come on his lips as he saw the wonder and anxiousness flicker across the child’s face. Edward sifted up in his seat and his eyes began to trace the shadowed movements of the soldiers outside. There was a rise of silent excitement amongst the other patients which only fueled Edward’s curiosity.

“Where are we going?” Edward asked again.

“We are going to take you to a good place, Edward, but I am going to have to go and help my friends now,” Roy told him. Edward’s brow furrowed in contemplation and Roy leaned over to the man next to him. “Garfiel, would you be able to take Edward and get him through his line? I need to help out there.”

Garfiel nodded his head and carefully took the boy from Roy’s arms.  He caught a look of disappointment in his eyes as if he had expected Roy to take Edward all the way back to Eastern Command by himself. As much as he wanted to, it was simply not possible. As Roy pulled his arms back his sleeve got caught stopping him in his tracks. Golden eyes stared back at him obviously upset.

"Edward, let go of the nice man, he needs to go help the others-" Garfiel tried to tell him but Roy felt the little hand suddenly grip his sleeve even tighter as his eyes began to fill with a fiery determination. It was a flame as bright as the sun and Roy was suddenly struck with awe at it, he couldn't seem to move.

"No," the boy pouted. "No, you said that you would take me to the new place."

"Edward, you will get there, but he has another job to do to help everyone-"

"No!" Edward scolded him ignoring Garfiel's words. The boy looked like he was going to protest but froze when Roy laid his free hand over his. Edward glanced back at Roy, his arguments silenced.

“Edward, I promise you will get there. Even if I am not right beside you, I promise that I will always be trying to get you home. But, to do that I need to go,” Roy told him softly.

“H-home?” the little boy inhaled sharply. His eyes grew wide and he looked suddenly terrified. Edward’s body froze stiff like he was transformed into a bronze statue as a hazy film grew over his glassy eyes. He looked dazed and his demeanor completely changed. He wasn’t focused and had no response. Roy began to panic internally as he thought something was terribly wrong with the kid. But, Garfiel simply groaned to himself under his breath.

"He blanked out again," the man muttered upsettably. He shook the boy lightly, but Edward didn't snap out of it. The way Garfiel reacted meant that this odd behavior was not an uncommon occurrence. Though Roy had spent all day with Edward, he needed to remember that he knew nothing about him aside from his favorite animals and desire to read. Garfiel was mothering him and all the other kids in the Village since Edward got there. He would know more about the child than he did.

“Is he alright?” Roy asked him, trying to hide the bitter concern that flooded him. It did not work. His voice was consumed with worry and Garfiel easily caught onto it.

“I am sorry. He… He does this when someone asks about his family. I don’t know why. No one really knows that much about him because he can’t talk about it. It’s terrifying every time someone accidentally brings it up but it shouldn’t last more than a few minutes.”

Roy frowned as he held Edward’s small slack hand in his. It felt warm but the child’s eyes were dead cold and betrayed the life that flowed through them. He heard of cases in people who were traumatized so badly that they chose never to remember what had happened to them. The soldiers who returned to Eastern Command after their deployment were never the same. They weren’t crazy. They were just different, and they never ever talked about it. He could not imagine what the boy had to go through to be put into shock as he was.

Guilt flooded through Roy as he realized that he was the one who had caused the boy’s state. If only he knew. If only he was more careful. Roy carefully reached a hand down and set it on the boy's amputated shoulder. There was no reaction of any sort from the kid.

"Edward," he said softly to the boy, shaking him slightly. "Edward," he repeated when it proved to no avail. He needed to snap the boy out of it. Roy bit his lip in regret and closed his eyes for a few seconds. He gently lowered the hand he held to the boy's lap and took a step away. He didn’t know what he should do anymore. He couldn’t leave Edward like this, but there was nothing he could do to help him.

“I-I’m sorry,” he said as if that would make everything better and Edward would suddenly wake up like everything was alright. It wasn’t, and Edward didn’t blink. Garfiel smiled weakly. He understood, but still didn’t have an answer as to what he should do. A heavy reassuring hand fell on Roy’s shoulder and he

"I have been with him for two years and I still don't know anything about the boy," Garfiel sighed.

"Hey Colonel, Hurry up! We have a lot of work to do!" Roy heard Jean shout from the doorway of the cafeteria. He turned around to see the Lieutenant hanging in the door for him. He looked tired, frazzled, but determined. It was about time they wrapped this thing up.

“It’s alright,” Garfiel told him, his voice quivered a little bit, “I know how to calm him down. It isn’t the first time. I will take care of him. You do what you must to get us out of here. He will understand. Do you need you jacket back?” Roy looked at his bright blue jacket which was wrapped around the boy’s waist. It was the only form of clothes that the child had. Roy couldn’t think of taking it from him.

“N-no,” Roy’s voice scratched out after he cleared his throat. “Keep it.” Garfiel gratefully nodded his head towards him and Roy knew that he had to go but his feet were plastered to the ground. He tried with all of his might to move but he couldn’t budge an inch. The blank helpless look on Edward’s face made him freeze in his spot. He couldn’t just leave the boy there after what he had caused. Garfiel noticed his trouble.

“Go on. It will be fine,” he reassured him. Roy knew that the man had taken care of him for a long time Edward would be alright. After staring for a few more seconds, his body relaxed, and he started to move. He began to turn away much to Jean’s relief, but he couldn’t help but look back at the small child in Garfiel’s arms.

“Come on Colonel,” Jean sighed. Roy could tell he was not aggravated with him. Jean, more than anyone, liked Edward, but he also knew that they had a job to do. The lot of them had an emotional day. Roy could not let his get in the way either. Roy frowned and finished his torturing walk to the door. Each step was agonizing and told him to go back to Edward, but he knew he couldn’t listen. A heavy hand rested on his shoulder and he got a weak smile from Jean. “Hey, you will be able to find him later. Now we got to get him out of here. He will understand.”

Roy found a grateful smile come on his face but frowned as he remembered the glassed over look Edward had. He closed his eyes tiredly and pushed passed his subordinate into the hallway. He knew his answer to Riza’s question earlier. After what he did, making Edward blank out like that, he didn’t think he could ever be a father.


	5. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roy works to help Edward get home and Maes has to teach him how to be a better adult figure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to finish this a while ago, but I have had a lot of work to do with my classes. I will start to work on the next chapter over break if I have the time!

**_The Cripple_ **

Chapter 5

Home

 

Roy heard Maes before he even got to the office door in the Administrations building. He knew that the man was outraged, as were all of them, but with the volume and hoarseness of his friend’s voice, he believed that there hadn’t been a stop in his rage for at least twenty minutes. He would be amazed if Maes could even talk after this. As Roy left the Administrations building, Maes’ voice faded but the memory of it still hung in his ears. There was an anxious crawl in the air and Roy knew he had to do everything in his power to relieve it. This mission could either go smoothly, or it could go to hell fast if the doctors or the soldiers did not comply with orders. Everyone sensed the incoming change, but no one knew what would come of it. They were all just waiting to see what would happen. Roy recognized that the change was good, the patients would get to go home and live real lives, but he still felt the tension quickly run up his arms and cause goose bumps. The need for this to be finished quickly and efficiently was overwhelming him. His constant worry about Edward was not helping the mix either. He knew that the instant he had a chance, the instant he had a break from all the bustling work, he would go back to the cafeteria and find the boy again. He knew his worry would only be relieved if he saw Edward was alright. But whether he would be able to help the boy or not was another issue entirely.

Outside, Roy had to push past a race of soldiers who were trying their best to load up the trucks with confiscated paperwork and people. The first line of patients were slowly making their way from the Cafeteria to the lawn where the vehicles were parked. They were organized by apparent age and gender. The small girls had their arms crossed over themselves, some shameful of their nakedness, others cold in the clear summer night air. There were a couple soldiers handing out blankets to the patients as they came out, but Roy could tell that they wouldn’t have enough blankets for the entire population of the village. He also noticed that they didn’t have enough vehicles either for a quick evacuation. It seemed that Eastern Command had underestimated the hell that the Heissgart Village created. However, though it was late and cold and miserable, and though they were short on provisions and complications muddied the evacuation process, Roy heard amongst the barking orders of soldiers excited whispers floating amongst the crowd. The patients were eager to help in the process of getting out of there and did not put up any fights. Roy saw several of the older patients helping the young girls who couldn’t stand or walk to their appropriate vehicles. It seemed that everyone wanted to get out of there. Where humanity had failed for years, it was now coming together to end the horrible mess of the Heissgart Village in any way it can.

Roy walked over to where the center of the operation was set up. Small vehicles used for soldier transport were circled around with lamps hanging off to give lighting for the officers to work under. Radios were dumped on the hood of the vehicles to keep communications around the village and to Eastern Command open. A bunch of officers were straining over their paperwork to record patient number, vehicle load, and use of equipment. Though the military had a lot of necessary paperwork which Roy constantly neglected, it was quite efficient even if redundant. Someone could know exactly what went down at the Village operation just by looking at the mission file. They could know everything that went on down to the gallons of fuel used in the tanks of the trucks to get there. However, Roy knew that to finish that report would take a lot more than one night under field lamps. It would undoubtedly take weeks for the reports to end and even more months of work for the legal system to finish their job of giving the doctors their dues.

“Colonel Mustang, sir!” Roy heard his name called out as he approached a specific group of officers in the center. Captain Goffrey, the apparent leader of the arriving unit, was saluting him and Roy quickly returned it as he didn’t want to waste time with formalities.

“You oversee loading the patients correct?” he asked without waiting for a formal introduction. He always thought introductions were pointless. They wore rank and nameplates for a reason.

“Yes sir. There are estimated to be over 1200 patients here. We have enough trucks to carry only 100 people. It is a couple hour trip to East city. There are currently three hospitals around willing to take in the patients. It will take a few days to get all the patients in. I requested for a medical unit to come up and help with the patients and food until we can shuttle all of them back-“

“Call into East City and request for a bus service to join us on the evacuation. Busses can carry a lot more people than our trucks can. It will get everyone out of here faster. Get at least 5 busses, if not more. We can shorten the evacuation to only a couple days,” Roy told him. Only carrying 100 people per trip, which included some soldiers, was not going to work. Not for him. The Captain quickly nodded his head and snapped towards one of the specialists who were handling their radio. They got the request and started to handle it immediately. Before the Captain could even ask what else, Roy was already onto the next thing on the list.

“Grab a group of five people to start scanning the buildings to see if there are any straggling patients. Not all of them can walk. There might be a few that were left behind.”

“Yes, sir. I don’t think that they would like it very much if they were left out of the evacuation. Being here? I am getting the jibbies just looking at this place for five minutes. I couldn’t imagine leaving anyone-“

“It is more than the ‘jibbies’, Captain. This is exactly what it looks like when humanity failed. It is human lives that have not been treated with even the slightest respect we give out animals. It isn’t scary, it is horrifying. Once you get inside there you will see exactly why this place should haunt children’s nightmares more than the boogeyman. You will _not_ leave anyone,” Roy seethed at the man’s light-hearted jab. The Captain’s face paled at how serious the conversation turned suddenly.  Roy did not like how light he was taking such a horrible thing. He had the same feeling when he came into the Heissgart Village but he also was not face to face with the horrifying result until he had stumbled upon it. Here the Captain was right in the middle of the evacuation process and trying to lighten the mood with a joke. Roy didn’t think it was funny. Nothing he saw that day was funny.

“I-I didn’t mean anything by it,” the man defended cautiously. “I-I will get a team right on that-“

“Have your teams scan very building but the East Ward, that building over there,” Roy said, pointing to the dark ominous building on the edge of the village property. Where it was eerie in the day time, the building looked like it came right out of a horror show now. The Captain followed his finger over to where the building sat, but his expression only changed from focused to curious. Only Roy knew what truly laid inside the building. He would not let more people than necessary find out. “I will need a team of 15 soldiers with good hard stomachs to head to go to that building. They will need personal protective equipment such as gloves and a lot of bags. Do you have a chaplain with you?”

“Uh, yes sir. We do.”

“Send them as well.”

 “Sir, what should they expect to find there?” the Captain asked innocently. He looked quite scared at how much man power he was trying to recruit for a task. Whenever a chaplain got involved, they knew that there was going to be an endless amount of grief coming out. Roy’s teeth gritted together as the horrifying pictures of the East Ward flew through his mind. There definitely would be for the poor people who had to deal with the mess in the morgue. The memories were not easily suppressed and though Roy was not the most religious man, he knew the comfort a chaplain could bring to a frightened and disturbed mind. He wished that he had one with him before heading into the East Ward. But even though his mind wanted to submerge back into the darkness it witnessed there he had to maintain his composure. Roy took in a huge breath and let it out before continuing.

“Probably the worse hell they will ever see in their lives,” he retorted stiffly. The Captain closed his mouth which until then was hung agape and quickly spun around to get his troops organized for the change in plans. Seeing that the Captain was on top of things, Roy knew that he could continue with the long list of things he needed to do. Roy quickly ran through the things in his head which was spinning faster than a top at that second. Organizing his thoughts was already a task as it was, but he couldn’t afford a mistake here. He needed to help as much as he could. He needed to get the patients out of there as fast as he could. Who knew when they would all return home? If he could speed up the process, he would.

The cool summer night air suddenly felt hot against his skin and in his lungs. After a while of consulting with the other officers, Roy excused himself and left the small make shift office and into the darkened night that engulfed the surrounding field. The more he thought about what he had to do, the more lost he felt. All Roy wanted to do at that moment was to take everyone out of the hell that was the village and just relax in the world he had known before. But to do that, he needed to do everything on his list first. He found that it was hard to concentrate when there was a buzzing chaos of people working around him.

A hand rested on his shoulder and Roy jumped out of his skin as he was shocked out of his thoughts. He quickly spun around to find Maes looking back at him with a concerned expression plastered on his face. He didn’t even know that he was there. He thought that he still heard his angered voice from inside the office even though that was possible since he was out of ear shot of the entire building. Roy groaned as he dropped his head into his hands and massaged the growing headache out of it. Was he losing his mind?

“Hey, I tried calling you a million times. You look wound like a spring. Are you okay?” Maes asked him. His voice was soft and worried, but it left no room for argument. If Roy tried to brush him off he would only dig deeper.

“I guess. I guess. I don’t know, Maes,” Roy muttered as he tried to figure out what was wrong with him. His mind was blurry and he was tired, confused really. He was a commanding officer. He couldn’t be confused. A sympathetic smile grew on his friend’s face and beneath the bags that surrounded his eyes, Roy could see that Maes was experiencing the same thing. Snappy, irritated, but mostly confused.

“Look, Roy, we had a long day-“

“Understatement of the century-“

“Yes, we had an _extremely_ long day,” he corrected. “We saw a lot of things and witness much more. I know your mind is trying to do a million things at once to fix it, but even though you are a high-ranking Colonel, you can take a break you know.”

“I know but I can’t. I need to get Edward and everyone out of here-“

“You don’t need to do anything now. The Captain and his unit has got the rest of this covered. We only needed to tell them what we know so that they can do their job better. Havoc and Hawkeye are about done finishing up with their work as well organizing the patients and the loading process. We are supposed to catch the next ride back to Eastern Command. You helped enough already, Roy. You did the job you came here to do.”

“I can’t just leave this. I need to help, I need to make sure that they do this right or else they will never get out of here, or worse-“

“Worse? Now you are overreacting. You need to calm down. You have already done enough for today. Now, where is Edward? You should spend some time with him and relax. I thought he would be with you-“

“Worse? You know what would be worse? The patients thinking that the outside world is just as bad as this shit hole! What if the soldiers were to mess up? What if they were to unknowingly hurt them? They don’t know what the patients need!” Roy scolded his friend.

“Roy, you don’t know what the patients need any better than they do,” Maes retorted stiffly. The words stung, and Roy closed his eyes tightly and ran a shaky hand through his hair. He was shivering from the built-up stress and anger in him. But Maes, in that minute cut right to the heart of everything that Roy was so confused about. Roy didn’t even realise it himself. He felt his eyes heat up as they threatened to water but he held them in as best as he could.  The man closed his mouth in surprise as he saw he struck a note inside of him. Maes had suddenly found the reason why Roy was so on edge. It was not simply stress but everything. Roy did have a long day. He saw the source of all people’s nightmares. He witnessed the degradation of humanity. But, mostly, he realized, he had hurt a little boy because he didn’t know how to help him. He didn’t know how to help Edward.

“What happened to Edward?” Maes asked calmly with breath of air that seemed to escape him. A fear was held in his eyes and for a moment, it looked like he was afraid for Edward. Roy was far surpassing him in worry. He had an overwhelming need to run back and hold Edward until he came back to reality. But that need was suppressed by his shame and confusion on what really happened.

“I… I don’t know. He blanked out. He’s not responsive. I said something and… Hell, I am worried, Hughes! How do I fix this? How could I do that?” Roy panicked as he threw up his arms in exasperation. He felt the over whelming need to pace but as he began to walk away, Maes grabbed him gently but firmly by the shoulders and held him still in his place. Roy felt the pads of Maes’ fingers dig into his bicep as the fear of the unknown got to him. Roy could tell that his friend was already protective of Edward as well as any little kid he probably would ever meet. Maes was afraid of what he had done.

“What’s wrong with Edward? Is he hurt?”

“No! No. He’s blanked out. It’s… I don’t know. Mr. Garfiel said it happened when people talk about his family. He can’t think about it he just… stops. I told him he was going home and he… well he…”

“Froze,” Maes filled in. Roy grimaced and nodded his head. His friend seemed to relax a bit when he realized that Edward was not seriously hurt and that Roy wasn’t a complete idiot. However, even though he didn’t physically hurt Edward, Roy’s worry still was not lessened. He felt sick but Maes smiled gently back reassuringly. “Sounds like some trauma there, Roy. You couldn’t have known about it. It isn’t your fault. But now you need to go back and make sure he is okay.”

“Garfiel is with him. I had to go help with this but the kid wanted me to stay-“

“I think you would make him feel a lot better. He likes you, Roy. It is important for a kid to know that he could trust adults and that they could help him.”

“How am I supposed to help Edward if I don’t even know how to take care of him?” Roy asked him desperately. Maes shook his head as if he was missing the point. Roy knew he was. He didn’t understand what Maes was trying to tell him and he was afraid it had to do with something about parenthood. It seemed everyone wanted to see him happy with Edward, but Roy knew that he was no father and there was no way he ever could be. He had proven that already but Maes was still blind to that important fact.

“Come on. I have something you need to see,” the man said as he motioned for Roy to follow him. Roy reluctantly clomped after him. As they walked across the lawn and back into the Admissions Building, Roy found the air to become less hot and congesting. He saw the arrival of a few buses to pick up some more patients and then the subsequent loading of people onto them. Though it seemed that they ran out of blankets, the patients seemed perfectly content with leaving the hell hole of the Heissgart Village in any way possible. The relieved look on their faces soothed Roy’s anxious thoughts and reminded him that this day was almost over.

The office that Maes lead him into was in more disarray than Roy had imagined it to be walking in. There were boxed up mountains of paperwork ready for shipment back to Eastern Headquarters though not nearly as much as there probably was waiting for them in the twisted maze of the Heissgart Village. Privates that came on the convoy were already running laps to get the sensitive material back to the trucks for transport. With any luck those files would help them identify the families of the patients that were held captive in the village for so long. Any scrap of paper could help them learn anything about a patient. Briefly, Roy wondered what those files had to say about Edward. He wondered if there were any files on him at all.

“You can’t take those files! You can’t take my patients! This breaks doctor-patient confidentiality!” Roy heard one of the white coated doctors say from where he was cornered by the military police. Roy recognized him as the threatening physician in the cafeteria earlier that day. He had thought he had already won when they last talked, but it seems he was learning fast just how wrong he was. The police were trying to put handcuffs on the man to take him out to the trucks where many of the other staff had already gone. For the official investigation they were going to be questioned back in Eastern Command. Some of them were rather more reluctant to follow orders than others.

“Mr. Tucker there is no such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality with you or anyone in this building. You have no medical degree. You have no license. So, it will be in your best interest to come quietly,” the officer announced to the doctor who was finally detained. The man struggled against the police to have one last stance.

“This is against the law! I want a lawyer!” he exclaimed as if that would help at all but it got him nowhere.

“You are going to need the best lawyer in the universe to get you any less than forty years.” Maes stepped aside to let the rather annoyed officers carry the physician out. Tucker kicked and lashed at anyone within range and Roy had to back out of the way just not to be hit. As the man was passing Roy caught his eyes. The only thing he saw was pure insanity.

“You!” Tucker cried out as he recognized him. Roy did not let himself be surprised. When staring at the scum of the world the only emotion he could have was disgust. “You’re the one who ruined everything! You shut down scientific progress! Enlightenment! You don’t know what these patients can do, what they need!”

Roy did not respond but kept his cold burning gaze on the doctor. Everything he felt that day, all the hate, anger, disgust, and rage was poured into that one glare sent at that one man and the doctor was unprepared for his backlash. The man was caught so off guard by the intensity his screaming arguments were silenced as he was stunned in shock. The soldiers hauled him out of the office. The office was left in an odd quietness as Roy watched the devil disappear. He hoped that he would be sent back to hell where he belonged. However, the resulting silence did not suit the office. It was an instant drastic change that snapped Roy out from his consuming emotions. He didn’t want to dwell in that state of disgust for long. It didn’t feel good for his heath. Roy felt a hand on his shoulder and he looked back to see his friend grimacing back at him. It was as close to a smile as any of them could get at that moment.

“What the hell are you doing in here? Why did you bring me here?” Roy asked him.

“Well, while you were off helping with the logistics of everything, I needed to make sure all legal aspects were swiftly taken care of. You saw probably the easiest of it. Some of the staff had to be tazed, an MP got his lights knocked out by a box of medical records an angry physician threw, and one nurse injected themselves with enough tranquilizer to kill an ox. It’s been hell to make an understatement,” Maes sighed. It was obvious he was tired and very frustrated by the turn of events. Roy was not surprise that the nurses would not come easily. This was probably their livelihood for many years. To take the only thing they have away from them was undoubtedly going to cause some upheaval. However, Roy didn’t see a problem in it. They were taking their jobs and possibly their freedom with these arrests, but they have taken the lives and years of countless innocent people. For him that exchange was not equivalent at all, but it would have to do for now.

“However,” Maes continued as he began to push Roy towards the back of the office where a large old rickety desk sat. It appeared that he had that area cleared out for a central hub for paperwork. Piles and boxes of papers were stacked high on top of it and seemed to be straining the desk’s stability. “You are here for something else. One thing that they did not neglect is paperwork. They thought like scientists. They wrote everything down and its scarily thorough. I don’t know about the patient files, how well developed they are, but the physician log books have practically all ‘treatments’ logged in at least from the East Ward. It was a good thing that we were able to take these files into custody because they practically seal the trials for themselves.” There was a large old binder on top filled with papers to the brim. Maes heaved it off the table and handed it to him. Roy almost buckled under the weight but held himself up with what little dignity he had left that day.  He looked surprised at Maes, ignoring the large binder in his hands as he was caught off guard by what his friend had just said.

“What do you mean we were lucky?”  Roy asked. His friend sighed and massaged the back of his neck tiredly.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “After all of the shit that went down to even find these files there was a chance that we couldn’t take them. Doctors have a right to their patients’ paperwork for confidentiality reasons. We would need a warrant for the paperwork and maybe even consent from the patients themselves. However, the man who had his signature on them luckily didn’t have a license. Therefore, the confidentiality didn’t exist.” That thought did not sit well with him. Roy knew that they would have gotten the pictures eventually. After liberating the patients and taking the physicians into custody, they would have undoubtedly gotten a warrant for the files. However, he could not imagine the smug look on Dr. Tucker for this small victory.

“To think they could have gotten away with it,” Roy grumbled in distaste.

“They were getting away with it until you came along,” Maes stated flatly. He cut off his downward spiraling thoughts before they began. “Even I was going to pass the inspection. Because of you and that little boy, these kids will be better-“

“Maes-“ Roy was going to retort but the man interrupted before he could fully refute him. His friend motioned for him to open the large binder in his arms. He realized that Maes would have given it to him for a reason, but until then he wasn’t quite sure why. Trusting his friend, he cautiously fumbled to flip the cover. The pages were filled with numbers and dates. Columns listed patients by number and the dates they came and their death. Roy flipped through the huge binder and saw patient after patient listed by the hundreds. The dates in chronological order started in 1840 and went until just the previous year when the last patient was admitted. Roy was baffled by the sheer mass of people recorded in just that one book.

“The Village took in all of those people. A lot of those people had met their death at the hands of the doctors here. The ones that didn’t had years that would never be returned. Now, it is all over, because of you,” Maes said with small smile that was drowning in relief and gratefulness. It looked like he was going to cry again, but Roy begged that he would hold it in. With the weight of the book in his hands, he felt like he was holding the lives of all the patients in the village. It was pure luck that he found Edward on the lawn that morning. It was pure luck that got them to where they were. But Maes was right, they had saved all these people.

Roy slowly put the book back down silently on the desk and placed his hand over his mouth. He was having trouble calming himself down as the reality of the village settled in his stomach. He knew that after tearing the village apart that the patients were now free but he didn’t know the magnitude of what he had accomplished. He didn’t realize everything that he had done. Edward and all the other children were going to grow up and live good lives. They were going to go to school and find their families. Roy’s eyes began to tear up the more he thought about it and soon he couldn’t even dream of seeing clearly ever again. They began to pour down his face and as he didn’t know if wiping them away or choking down his sobs by keeping his hand over his mouth would retain his dignity more. However, the longer he fought himself, the more he heard a wet sob break through his barrier that he was trying so hard to keep up. It was an ugly cry and Roy soon felt it overcome him as he released everything that had built up in him that day. The shame, the guilt, the anger, and the horror all washed out of him in a wave. It went out of him so fast that it nearly left him on the ground. Maes kept a hand on his shoulder to comfort him as he released it all. It seemed like ages until everything was out of him. Eventually the choking sobs slowed to nothing and his tears dried and left only ghosts of their tracks down his cheeks. Roy massaged his face and wiped it quickly to hide any of the evidence that was left behind. He turned one eye up to look at his friend and saw Maes wipe his glasses off which were slowly steaming up from his own wet eyes.

“I-I never… all those people…” Roy stuttered as he was still unable to fathom the magnitude of his own reach. He had helped all those people, all those hundreds and hundreds of people, and he didn’t even know it.

“You were able to do an amazing thing, practically without knowing it,” Maes softly said. “You helped Edward just by being here and doing what you thought you had to do. We could never know what we would have found. We could never have predicted the result or what happened along the way. I have yet to claim myself as a father, but I believe that’s what parenting is, Roy. Putting your best foot forward and trying your whole-hearted best to help someone smaller than you,” he told him. Roy bit his lip. Everything in his being wanted to retort. He wanted to argue when it came to Edward. He had hurt him. He had made him blank out and he didn’t know what to do. What if he made it worse? Though Riza and Maes kept telling him that there was a world out there where he could be a father, Roy still didn’t think it was this one. But, for now, he at least knew that even if he didn’t know how, he could help Edward. He could help him and by god, he was going to help him till they found him a home, whether that was with his family or someone else.

Roy nodded his head and wiped his eyes on his sleeve one more time. Maes sniffed and smiled happily at him as he knew that they understood each other finally. Roy shakily straightened himself out and Maes dropped his supporting arm from his shoulder, knowing that he could walk on his own now that he had the strength to move forward.

“I-I think I want to see how Edward’s doing,” Roy muttered. The words were so soft that they barely got out of his mouth. However, his friend heard them and nodded his head encouragingly. Ever since Roy had put Edward down the only thing he wanted was to pick him back up. There was no reason to delay that any farther. Roy knew what he had to do now.  Maes grinned and slapped him gently on the back as they moved towards the door of the office together.

Roy was too eager to get back to the cafeteria where he knew that Edward and Garfiel as well as the rest of the patients were waiting to be evacuated from the Village. The room was bustling with soldiers as they patrolled the rows of patients to keep everyone in their appropriate line. The state of the place was very different than when he left, however, he easily found Garfiel standing in the corner talking quietly to Riza. He was in the row with the boys from ages 2-10, estimated of course. He was supposed to be in the line with the teenagers and adults but it seemed that the soldiers had recruited some of the older capable patients to help carry the children who could not walk by themselves. That strategy would not only save man power for the evacuation, but also provide the children with familiar faces to ease the anxiety that hung over all of them. Riza on the other hand, had a medic standing next to them who was inspecting Edward silently for any issues aside from the obvious. She must have heard what had happened and got a qualified nurse to help where they could. She was already doing more than him to help the child.

Roy’s eyes dropped to where the nurse was hovering over the little boy. The soldier was waving a small light in his eyes while Edward sat unfocused on Garfiel’s hip as he rubbed gentle circles in his back. The child was still wrapped up in Roy’s jacket that he had left him. Seeing Edward, Roy found his legs slow up but he forced himself to continue forward. He knew that he had to return to him. It wasn’t a choice, it was a duty. Riza caught sight of him as he approached them. She looked impatient, but still worried. It seemed that just like Maes, she was also very protective of the young boy they had met out on the grass not 24 hours ago. Roy couldn’t deny that the feeling flowed through him as well.

“It’s about time,” Riza said flatly which felt no better than if she had punched him in the face. She obviously did not like it that he had left Edward there, especially in the state that he was, even though he had work to do with the evacuation. He wanted to remind her of his very valid excuse, but his mouth said something completely different.

“How is he doing?” he asked the medic instead. The man shrugged as he put the light back in his pocket and straightened up.

“Do you want the truth or the glossed over version of it, sir?” the man asked roughly. He looked tired and not as concerned for the patient as he should have been. Roy assumed it was because it was a long day that was only going to get longer. He was one of the few medics that had to treat thousands of patients. If he wasn’t tired at that point, Roy didn’t know when he would be.

“The truth.”

“I have no fucking clue what’s going on with him,” he sighed. There was a gasp from Garfiel as he covered Edward’s ears from the curse that the medic had let slip but it was pointless. Edward was completely tuned out of the world. He wasn’t registering anything. Seeing his reaction though, the medic quickly apologized and continued to explain his diagnosis. “His vitals are good. He doesn’t show any sign of physical trauma or shock. I am no psychiatrist but… this has to be some wicked case of trauma or something.”

 “I there anything we can do?” Roy asked him, but instead of giving him an answer the medic just shrugged his shoulders and picked up his bag.

“Wait it out I guess. Then see a real psychologist when this shi-…. This mess is over,” he said. “I am sorry but that’s is all I can do. I got to check up on the other patients now.” The man gave a quick salute to him before sliding away towards another group of patients. Roy turned his gaze back towards Edward, his fear and worry not settled even in the least bit. Garfiel was rocking Edward back and forth as if to shake the shock out of him, but it wasn’t working. The boy was stuck. His golden eyes were glazed over and staring into a space between Roy and the door. He bent down and even when he was directly in the view of Edward, the kid stared right through him. What Roy wouldn’t give to return the life back to him.

Suddenly, Garfiel nudged him and Roy looked up. Without saying anything, the man began to put Edward into his arms. His arms quickly shot up to get a grasp on the child that was now being handed to him. He looked up in surprise after the kid was settled in his arms to see that Garfiel was smiling sadly to him.

“It looked like you needed to hold him more than me,” he simply said. Roy looked between Edward and Garfiel as the insecurities he held before spiked again. What if he just made it worse? He glanced back to Maes and the man simply nodded his head silently to reassure him. This was what he needed. When Roy got there that day, he wasn’t expecting so much heartache over a small boy like Edward. Even leaving him for a few hours was the most challenging thing that Roy admitted he ever had done. Everyone around him seemed to realize that. But, if this was what he felt like after a few hours, he could only imagine what would happen when they eventually had to send Edward home. The child needed a solid home with a full loving family, not an institutionalized village. If that home was with Roy for the few hours they were together, Roy guessed it was his duty to be there for him, at least as long as he could. He might not know what to do but being there for him was better than not.

Roy gently took a seat at one of the cafeteria tables and softly bounced Edward in his lab. He would have liked to say it was his own way to try and comfort the boy, but it was just his worry manifesting in a nervous tapping of his foot. Roy didn’t know how long he sat there, but it was long enough for Riza to start to guide Garfiel over to his own check up with the medic. She gave him a stiff nod in passing and Roy grimly returned it. There was no point in all of them waiting there for Edward to wake up.

Every minute felt like an hour but it probably wasn’t that long. Roy felt a sudden stir in his arms and he almost thought he had imagined it until it happened again. He looked down to see Edward twitch again, a small grumble escaping from the small child’s chest. The boy seemed to be waking up.  Roy was shocked as his eyes darted up at Maes who had noticed the change as well and then back to Edward in complete surprised. A huge wave of relief fell off of his shoulders and he couldn't help but smile as the boy slowly came to his senses. Roy gave Edward a little squeeze as if that would help pull him back faster and the kid blinked again. A small flicker of light returned to his eyes and Edward suddenly looked around utterly confused. It looked as if he didn't know where he was, yet he was searching for something.

"Oh, my god, Edward," Roy breathed utterly relieved. "I am so glad you're back." His voice seemed to startle the boy and his head whipped up with a shocked gasp to find Roy being the one holding him. The boy even had to do a double take to make sure it was really him. A small smile formed on his lips and then it quivered slightly. Roy frowned as he saw the boy contemplate the flicker of emotions that flew across his face. It was then that he noticed the boy's eyes were watering up. It looked like he was doing his best to keep them in but they were pouring out too fast.

 "Edward?" he asked cautiously trying to avoid hurting the boy's feelings and tearing him over the edge. Edward plowed his head into Roy's shoulder as if to try and hide his tears and his single hand took a hold on his shirt, gripping it hard. The boy's chest shuddered slightly as he tried to force himself to silence his sobs. Roy pulled the small child into a hug and held him there strongly.

"Everything is alright," Roy whispered to him quietly. "Everything is alright, I am here. It's going to be okay, you understand?" The kid gave a stiff nod into his shoulder though he didn't dare remove it. He kept a tight grip on Roy's shirt and didn't dare to let go. Roy gave him small pats on the back like he saw many other women do to their children when they were upset, however he doubted they were as distressed to the extent that Edward was. No, he wasn't upset, rather the boy looked terrified, relieved for the most part. It was as if he awoken from his nightmare expecting it still to be true. The boy shivered slightly and Roy tightened his jacket around the boy as if to make him warmer. Roy could only imagine what Edward had to go through to make him that frightened. It might have been something to do with his limbs, it might have been something to do with his family, but even then all Roy could do was guess. He was terrified himself to imagine that Edward had to go through any of this. He was a child and already having symptoms that soldiers have when they come back from war. That was something the boy should never experience. That was something the boy should never know.

Roy suddenly felt a hand lay itself on his shoulder and he looked up to see Maes smiling gently at him. It was kind of a cocky smirk, but nonetheless soft. Roy knew that Maes was basically trying to say I told you so, but he didn't care at that moment. Yes, Maes was right about the boy being attached to him, and he didn't care because at that moment he knew it was the same for him. The boy needed someone there to comfort him, and Roy was relieved that he could be the one to do it. He didn't know what they had entitled for them in the future, however he knew that he wanted to try his hardest to make sure things went well for the boy.


	6. Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edward is returned safely to Eastern Command with all of the other patients for processing. However, the closer he is to going home, the closer Roy is to saying goodbye. What will he do when the time comes?

**_The Cripple_ **

Chapter 6

Goodbye

 

The long dark night began to break into the orange and pink of a sunrise before Roy even found himself boarding a bus to ship himself and his subordinates home. Edward, after his own exhausting day, was fast asleep in his arms. Roy was grateful for that. It was too early for a kid like him to be awake. After everything that they had been through, knowing that Edward was at least getting some rest was reassuring. They still had a long day ahead of them and it was best that they be prepared.

Roy gently tucked his jacket tighter around Edward as he took a comfortable seat by the window. He figured that he could eventually fall asleep as well if he spent a couple minutes looking at the landscape. Though he was tired, his mind was busy and needed to unwind. As Roy got comfortable, he glanced down at Edward to see that the short greasy strands of hair had fallen into his face and every breath he took made them flutter up then back in place. It seemed like he had not taken a bath or washed his hair in forever, but that was the least of Roy’s concerns coming from the Heissgart Village. Tired, and bored, he began to brush the long blond hair out of Edward’s face so that it wouldn’t bother the child while he was sleeping. Roy tried to tuck the greasy strand behind the kid’s ear but it wouldn’t stay. As Roy did his best to wrangle the kid’s hair into shape, Riza took the seat next to him. There were bags underneath her eyes but they were as alert as ever. Roy didn’t know if he ever saw her truly tired before. Her eyes fell over the two of them for a couple seconds to take in the picture before releasing a small sigh. Seeming to understand his struggle, Riza reached into her pocket and pulled out a small spare hair tie that she must have kept on her. Without saying a word, she gently combed up Edward’s locks of dirty hair and pulled them into a small pony tail. Though it wasn’t full, and it didn’t get all the hair, it solved the problem that Roy was trying to battle by himself. He muttered some quiet thanks. She didn’t say anything except for a quick suggestion to get some rest. For once, Roy did not argue.

It seemed like he had just closed his eyes before he was being nudged awake once more by his subordinate. Roy lazily blinked his eyes open to see the front of Eastern Head Quarters. The parking lot and training field was filled with green tents, each with a line of naked patients running through them. Soldiers ran around and passed out blankets and some hospital gowns and pajamas for the patients to wear while others set up cots behind the in processing for the bulk of the crowd to rest on. With as many patients there, Roy guessed that the other hospitals assigned to the job were in a similar state.

Roy groaned as he stretched out his sore muscles. His arms and back were killing him from carrying Edward all day, but he would continue being sore for as long as he needed. He was not going to put the little boy down. As the bus filtered out, Roy tiredly picked up the still sleeping boy and hobbled his own way off the bus. Outside was loud as soldiers bustled patients back and forth to get them in different lines to process. Riza and Havoc went their own way towards the offices to begin filling out the paperwork that they needed to get done. It was the only thing that they were able to do at that moment to hurry the process along. Roy, however, found himself ushered into one of the lines with Edward. He needed to get the kid processed so that they could figure out where his family was.

Eventually, after hours of waiting in the rising heat of the summer sun, he made it to the tent. He took one step into the musty darkness under the tarp and was immediately assaulted by a few medics who were questioning him to no end. Roy’s sleep deprived mind was spinning and suddenly he felt a tug in his arms as the medics started to quickly jostle Edward from his grip.

“No, stop! He doesn’t like-” Roy tried to fight the medics off but he was too late. They woke the little boy in his arms up.  The first thing that Edward saw was the blue masked face of a medic clad in scrubs, and he was scared. Edward let out a little yelp and started to kick the medics away from him the best that he could. Roy tried to get a hold of Edward as the kid scrambled back towards him. With the ferocity that he was fighting with, Roy almost dropped him.

“Whoa, whoa, Edward, calm down! It’s okay. You are safe,” Roy exclaimed.

“No. no, no, no, no, no, no,” Edward wheezed and Roy winced as the kid’s fingers dug into his side as he anchored himself there. The nurses suddenly stepped back as they saw the child’s reaction to them. They were only taking him to get his vitals done like heart, blood pressure, and weight, but Roy knew that Edward did not understand that. He was terrified of nurses, probably more than the boogey man, and he had every right to be. Roy stood there and held Edward a little bit as he tried to get the kid to calm down. It took a lot to keep the child from crying out especially since the nurses were still in eye shot. Edward did not want to be anywhere near them.

“Edward, you are alright. I won’t let them do anything bad to you. These doctors are my friends,” Roy lied easily to him. He had never met these soldiers before in his life except maybe in an odd passing. He couldn’t tell someone their names let alone their favorite color. However, for this, Roy trusted them. And he needed to get Edward to trust them too. However, the kid stubbornly shook his head and burrowed himself as far away from the nurses as he could get.

“Th-they are going to punish me! It’s gonna hurt!” the kid whimpered in his own defense.

“Kid, uh, Edward,” one of the nurses started to say, “we aren’t going to hurt you.” Before the man could fully finish he had set his hand gently on Edward’s shoulder. It was as light as a feather but it had set Edward off. The kid screamed loudly and the medic jumped back. Roy felt his own ear drum shatter at the volume of it. As he winced, he caught sight of some of the patients who were still in line outside shift and whisper nervously to each other. Not only were they holding up the line of patients, but Edward’s screams only made their own anxiety about the nurses double. Roy had to calm him down.

“Hey remember our talk on reptiles?” Roy said quickly to distract the kid. The kid liked to talk about animals and it was better for him to think abou that than the nurses. “Hey remember that?” Edward slowly quieted down but made no other move to open up. Roy thought he was going to ignore him but the kid nodded his head where it was plowed into his shoulder. Roy sighed in relief as the kid was at least listening to him. “Remember the talk about the bearded lizard? How it defended itself? What did it do again? I am kind of forgetting.” There was a soft mumble into his shoulder but no words could be made of it. Roy nudged him to repeat and the kid turned his head towards him. He wore an angry pout as he didn’t like to be held in the medical tent. He didn’t want to be there and was angry that Roy was making him stay.

“It got big when it was scared,” he muttered again. Roy smirked and looked up at the nurses to see if they were catching on to what he was doing. They looked surprised but eagerly joined in on the play.

“Oh yeah, and then the lizard realized that there was nothing to be scared of when the mean predator would run away. How about we go through this together? Alright? And anything that hurts you let those nurses know it. Like that lizard,” Roy told him. Edward glanced at the nurses real quick and shied away for a moment even though the nurses were trying their best not to look menacing at all. The kid looked like he wanted to throw out Roy’s idea and continue to fight the nurses to get away from him but then suddenly he puffed out his chest a little bit and stuck out his tongue at the nurses. They all acted like they were scared and Edward looked back at Roy with a surprised smile as if he didn’t think it would have worked. Roy smirked and carried Edward over to one of the chairs that was set up for the small examination which then shortly followed. The nurses were buzzing around to get his temperature and blood pressure. Though they only needed Edward’s vital signs, they did it to Roy as well to make Edward feel a little better about it. It was important for the kid to see that it was normal and alright. Between every procedure when Edward thought that they had enough he would give a big roar and the nurses would act scared and scuttle away back to their medical bags to retrieve the next instrument that they needed.

Eventually, the pattern came to an end and Roy and Edward were ushered off to the other end of the tent to continue in processing. One of the nurses were able to procure a small set of green hospital pajamas to dress Edward in to make him decent and Roy quickly dressed him before heading off to the next station. Even though Roy was successfully able to keep him covered up with his uniform jacket, it came to a relief to know that Edward would be able to have some form of clothes on them even if they were paper thin scrubs. After the whole encounter with the nurses, Edward sat a little taller in Roy’s arms as he looked around the tent with a confident smile. The boost to his confidence with the small game made him seem fine now. However, Roy could only imagine that he was confident knowing that someone else was there with him through the whole event. A fear of the nurses like that could not be wiped away by just one game of play. However, with it over with, Roy knew that it was something to worry about another day. The kid was fine. That was all that mattered.

The vital signs were taken over to a logging table and a team of Specialists and other lower enlisted quickly made a file for Edward. They asked him for his name and age but labeled it as TBD “To Be Determined” in the file. Even though Roy had full confidence in Edward’s name and age, there was still an uncertainty behind it. The kids could only remember so much about themselves. The rest would have to be looked for in Investigations. One of the soldiers picked up Edward’s wrist and recorded the information that hung on his shiny silver bracelet. Since the hospital recorded very precise logs, there was a large chance that they would be able to learn more information about the patients through them. The soldiers created two copies of the file and then handed one to Roy to carry with them. They pointed him through the other end of the tent where another soldier directed them to sit on a cot in order by their case number.

The waiting tent was huge with hundreds and hundreds of rickety old cots set up in rows which were strategically filled with patients, bed by bed. Most of them were small children in the section that Roy and Edward were placed in, and all were fast asleep. Even with limited blankets and pillows, Roy was not surprised that all of them were sleeping. It had probably been forever since any of them ever had their own bed. Even though it was an old cot with fraying tough fabric, it was more than they had ever had in a long time. Roy’s mind settled on that fact as he laid Edward down on the cot and relaxed with a small smile on his face. Edward grinned back at him and sat up as Roy sat tiredly down on the edge of the cot. Though the kid was wide awake now, he still looked tired and needed his rest. However, it was Roy who yawned first. The kid next to him giggled at him but soon was silenced as yawn seeped its way out of his own mouth. Roy chuckled and ruffled his hair.

“Get some sleep, Edward. We might be here a while,” he said. For once he didn’t argue and laid down to close his eyes. Roy bunched up his uniform jacket and placed it underneath Edward’s head as a makeshift pillow. Suddenly a blanket dropped on Roy’s lap and he looked up to see Maes standing above him with a small smile on his face. To say he looked tired was an understatement. Maes stood with slumped shoulders which were weighed down by the millions of bags underneath his eyes. Roy guessed that the only reason why he was able to find him in such a large crowd was because he had a million of his own lower enlisted subordinates prowling around the makeshift camp. Maes probably pried the information out of one of them with a few pictures of his wife. Whatever it took for him to find them, Roy was grateful.

“I kept getting updates on a strange man amongst the patients carrying a little boy. I had to come all the way out here from my nice air-conditioned office to make sure you weren’t raising hell,” Maes chuckled. Roy laughed lightly as he quickly unfolded the blanket and wrapped it around Edward, tucking him in lightly.

“I always knew you were a gossip girl, Hughes, but you seem to have all of your subordinates in on it too,” Roy smirked. “What’s going on with everything?”

“Yeah, well, it’s the only thing that can keep me entertained around here. It is always good to know everything,” Maes pointed out before he pushed up his glasses on the bridge of his nose. “The hospital staff are being taken in and interrogated. Obviously not all of them are at fault for the state of the facility, but they need to get to the bottom of this. Maybe if we can squeeze out anything else, it might help get the patients back to where they belong."

"What do you think the outcome will be?"

"Most likely the nurses and doctors without licenses will be fined for malpractice and probably face a year or two. Some of the staff will be let off with a fine depending on their answers. But with what I heard from the head of Intelligence, the owners aren't going anywhere for a long time. The trials of course are going to take forever in this shitty justice system. Some of the patients will be called back for their own questions, but I don’t think we have to worry about Dr. Tucker or his fellow physicians for a while," Maes told him. Roy smirked slightly laughing to himself. It served them right. Maes rolled his eyes knowing what he was thinking, but Roy knew the same was going through his head. His friend sighed and rubbed his brow as he continued onto the topic at hand.

"They are having people go around with the paperwork we gathered to help identify patients. They are also pulling soldiers as representatives of the patients to help decide where they will go when the time comes," Hughes explained to him. "Do you have his file?” Roy stifled a yawn and nodded his head.

"Yeah, right here,” he muttered as he lifted the file he had set down. It was thin, but hopefully it will grow enough to get Edward home. Maes nodded his head in acceptance as he saw it.

“Good. Are you going to stay with Edward until then?” he asked. Roy glanced back down to Edward who was now sound asleep on the cot. He was bundled up tight in the blanket and his breaths were deep but silent. Roy realized now that the weight of Edward’s world would rest on his shoulders if he decided to stay with him until he leaves. He would either be made to represent Edward or someone else would and he couldn’t picture that person having the kid’s best interest at heart. He didn’t know what would happen to the kid, where he would go, or who he would be families with. All those answers rested on his own decision. He felt nauseous thinking about it, but he kept a still face. If being Edward’s representative was the thing he needed to do to ensure that the kid went to a good home, he would do it even if that responsibility was too much to bear. Of course, he was going to be staying.

“Yes. Yes. Of course,” Roy said, shaking the bad thoughts out of his head for another day. Maes smiled sadly as he set a hand on his shoulder and shook him reassuringly.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I know, whatever you do, it will turn out alright. I can’t babysit you anymore though. I need to apologize to Gracia for not making it to dinner. Hawkeye will be around to check on you. She's not going home until later, opting to take the day off tomorrow."

"The day off? She must be slacking. She never takes a day off," Roy joked lightly. Hughes smirked lightly as he looked over his shoulder as if to make sure that Hawkeye wasn't listening.

"You better not let her hear you say that," he smiled before turning back to the matter at hand. "But seriously, Roy, make sure the boy's alright."

"I wouldn't do any differently."

Maes patted his shoulder heavily before departing from the tent. Roy let out a huge breath as he sank down in his seat. He wondered how he ever got tangled up in this mess far enough to get tied with Edward. He wondered why he didn’t want it any other way.

He saw a soldier walking around with a file, searching the children for a match. Once they were found, she tried her hardest to wake the boy gently and led the tired child off to a room on the side undoubtedly to review his information. Roy yawned again as he turned his eyes down to Edward. He hoped that it wouldn't take too long for the boy to get his file. Though he was thinking of the best intentions to find out where he truly belonged, he was also quite curious as to who the boy's family was. Maybe there really was a home out there for him. Maybe he was just lost. Roy doubted that was the case, but he had hopes. The bond between a parent and their child were the strongest out there, as Hughes would often remind him even though he still had several weeks before he was to become a father. If they did find Edward's parents, he hoped that they would take him back and give a valuable reason for letting him live in the Heissgart Village to begin with. After what he heard of Garfiel's case, he feared for the boy. How heart broken would he be if his parents didn't want him. If that was the case, did he already know?

Roy frowned as he looked down to the small file in his hands. Every second the soldiers got closer to taking up Edward’s case, the closer they were to saying good bye. Roy wanted to find out where Edward came from and why he was there in the Village. He wanted to find Edward the best home he could when the time came, but he kind of hoped that the time for that was a little farther off. He didn’t think he would have the power in himself to look the child in the face and say goodbye. He didn’t think that he would be able to break the kid’s heart like that. After everything they were through, it shouldn’t have to come to such a sudden end. It was all because of that stupid little file.

Roy sighed as he flipped it open quietly. The stark white pages seemed illuminated in the dark room and Roy held them closer to read what they had on them. There were only two whole pages in the entire thing. One of which was the small notes that the nurses had made on the kid’s vital signs. There was a height and weight category that held an entire sheet of scratched out math calculations. Roy noticed that they were trying to figure out the kid’s actual weight requirements since he was missing two limbs. However, even then he was still extremely underweight and abnormally short for his age by almost half a foot. Roy knew that malnutrition at the Heissgart Village would have some unfortunate effects on the children’s growth but it still shocked Roy to see how small Edward was in comparison to where he was supposed to be.

The other page was the information section on identifying and processing Edward through child services. It was a complex form with many section but most were empty. All that it said was this:

Case No. 309

Name: TBD Edward

Age: 5

Identification: Patient Tag 3100 _Cripple Incurable_

Roy glared at the page as he read what had been transcribed from Edward’s identification band that the Village had given him. It still hung around his wrist even now as he slept there. Those bands were supposed to signify the patient’s deficiency and their status there. Incurable. There was nothing to cure. Those doctors were going to keep the boy there because he was missing two limbs. He would have never left if Roy had not found him on the grass the other day. Roy shook his head to get the thoughts out of his mind. He sank back farther into the cot and yawned. That was behind them. He wouldn’t let Edward believe the lie that the doctors had tired to tell him, that he was incurable, that he was useless, or worse, unwanted.

Roy didn't know when he fell asleep but he must have drifted off in his own thoughts as he was being lightly shaken to consciousness. He yawned tiredly as he blinked his eyes open to see Hawkeye staring down at him. A young soldier was standing behind her with a manila folder in her hands. Roy slowly looked around to see some of the kids had already been cleared out. Now no more than ten remained, including Edward. He looked down and saw that the golden boy was still deeply asleep on the cot. He appeared to not have stirred an inch in that entire time, still wrapped up in the scruffy army wool blanket.  

“What happened when I was out?” Roy muttered, as he rubbed his face to get the exhaustion out of it. He could almost see his Lieutenant roll her eyes but she wasn’t that tired that she couldn’t stay professional.

“Lieutenant Havoc stole Lieutenant Colonel Hughes’ camera and took some pictures of you here with Edward as blackmail. I confiscated them for you, sir,” she told him. Roy grimaced as he had been curious as to where his other subordinate had gone off to. He wondered how Jean got his hands on Maes’ camera but he had a bet that it wasn’t stolen but rather readily given. It was a good thing that Riza was there or else he wouldn’t hear the end of it in the office. His thoughts were snapped back to Riza when she cleared her throat.

"Sir, it's Edward's turn," she told him softly. Roy gave he an acknowledging nod and looked over to the sleeping child beside him. He shook Edward's own shoulder lightly.

"Edward," he said, drawing the boy out of his daze. "Edward we have more work to do. This is going to be it alright?"

"Mmm," the kid yawned drearily. "It?"

"Yes, I will help you," Roy said as he gently picked the boy up. His arms were quite sore from carrying the boy around all day, but he tried to ignore it as he lifted him yet again.

"This way," the soldier said to him as he followed her back through medical to a small tent that looked like it once was a utility closet but was converted into a small office with some tables and chairs shoved into it. She sat on one side while they sat in the other. Roy handed her the file that he was given, and she quickly looked through the measly contents. After analyzing the contents, she shuffled through a small filing cabinet beside her and placed another identically labeled file between the two of them. It was significantly thicker than the other, probably filled with all the information scrounged up from the Village and Child Services. The woman pushed up her glasses and crossed her arms on the table in front of her as she settled down in to business.

"Young boy, is your name Edward Elric von Hohenheim?" she asked Edward calmly, ignoring Roy's and Riza's presence. The boy frowned and nodded his head. She muttered something under her breath that sounded as if she needed coffee before she shifted through some more papers. Roy felt Edward's hand tighten around his shirt and he looked down to see a small flicker in the tired light in his eyes. He looked like he was going to blank out again. Roy pulled him tighter onto his lap and rocked him slightly.

"It's okay Edward, relax," he muttered to him. The golden eyes glanced up to him and seemed to stick there. Roy gave him a weak smile as if to assure him and the boy returned it timidly. He decided to ignore Riza's observation of their exchange and instead focus on the specialist's work.

"Colonel, are you looking after him for the moment?" she asked him eventually.

"Yes," Roy replied with only a moment's hesitation. She nodded her head and handed him a pen for him to sign somewhere on multiple documents for verification.

"Alright, will you come with me to talk things over?" Roy nodded his head and stood up, resituating Edward in his arms to follow, however, the soldier didn’t move. The look on her face was tired and annoyed. With the raise of her eyebrow Roy realized why she wasn’t proceeding.

“Oh,” he muttered. “Alone.” Roy looked down at Edward who seemed oblivious to the exchange. The kid smiled weakly back at him when he noticed Roy was looking at him. It felt like someone had crushed his chest like an empty tin can. He would have to leave him, and he didn’t know if after this he would be back. This could be he last time with Edward and it was ending so fast. Why did fate have him find the child on the lawn of the Village just the other morning? If he didn’t, maybe he would never have found out how hard saying goodbye really felt. However, through the inner torment Roy forced a smile on his face to match Edward’s. Even as knives were being stabbed into his chest and twisted, he couldn’t distress the kid anymore. Roy glanced over to Riza and she nodded her head as she knew what he needed. She reached out and carefully took the child from him. Without her help, Roy probably would have been incapable of putting him down. However, the emptiness of his arms felt a lot heavier that anything he ever held before.

"Edward, I am going,” Roy told the kid, grabbing a light hold of his only hand. Edward’s eyes glanced down to where his hand was being engulfed in Roy’s and then back up at him. His eyes were wide, not happy like they were before. It seemed that he knew something was wrong. Roy sucked in a huge breath and continued to smile back at the kid. It was weak, but it was all that he had at that moment.

“There are going to be a lot of people coming to talk to you and take you on trips, but it’s going to be okay.”

"N-No, I don't want you to leave," he complained. Roy gave a reassuring squeeze to the kid’s hand to tell him that it was alright.

“I might be off doing other things, but I will make sure that you are alright at all times. Do you trust me?” he asked the kid. Edward’s lip quivered but he did not cry. He nodded his head and closed his eyes tight. Roy smiled and shook the kid’s hand gently. “Then everything will be alright. You will be okay.”

Roy gave the kid’s hand one last squeeze before gently letting it go. He turned back to the Specialist’s side to continue his work. She ushered him towards the door to the makeshift office and Roy shakily followed. He tried his best to block Edward’s soft cries from his mind and Riza’s quiet comforting words. He could not let himself turn around or else he knew he would never leave. He needed to go. The boy didn’t belong there, he belonged at home.

"Colonel, that was very nice what you did back there," the soldier commented lightly. "Do you have kids of your own?"

"No, I do not," he answered. She looked rather down trodden like she was betting whole heartedly he did. They took their own seats at the new desk and she spread her papers out once more. For some reason Roy felt tension in the air and he was afraid of what she was going to tell him.

"Colonel Mustang, Edward Elric does not have any family left, at least they're not accessible at this point so this leaves him with few options as to his relocation-"

"What happened to them all?" Roy asked curiously. The woman sighed to herself and sifted through her papers.

"No distant relatives of any sort. It seems that Trisha Elric was an only child. Her parents died recently giving the child no grandparents, the same with Van Hohenheim," she said stiffly, reading the facts from the paper. "This comes from his file of Child Services. They were the one who took up the boy's case."

"Do you know anything of what happened to him? How his parents-"

"Very little. All I have here are his family's medical records. It looks like he was admitted to the Central Hospital June 15th 1901 where he had his arm and leg surgically removed. The cause is unknown. His mother was admitted to the same hospital on the same date, possibly from the same cause. She was moved to the morgue two days later. They came from the small town of Baden which has no large hospitals that they needed which is why they were transported to Central," she stated.

"What about his father? Siblings?" Roy asked her.

"I don't have any information on him, nor did Child Services care to release any more information than what they gave to the Village. This is all that I got. He was sent to the Heissgart Village because of these injuries instead of a normal orphanage. Perhaps the boy would be able to tell you-"

"No, that won't be possible," Roy muttered cutting her off where she stood. "He doesn't respond well-"

"Traumatized?" she asked. Roy nodded his head. She clicked her tongue and wrote down a small note. "This makes things even more difficult."

"How?"

"Well, Colonel, you see, Edward Elric currently has two options for him to take. He could be placed into an orphanage, most likely East City, where he would have the chance to be adopted. Or, he could be placed in the care of another hospital in New Optain. It is a new facility for rehabilitating patients. He would be given-"

"No," Roy growled, shutting the woman up. She looked taken back but not surprised. "No, he is not going back to one of those places. He had enough of hospitals." After what he just saw Roy was not about to save the boy just to damn him to another life in confinement. He promised the boy green grass and the freedom to walk outside. He wasn't going to hand that over to another hospital. He was even disgusted she had offered that option.

"I know after what just happened you would be very closed minded about that option," she said calmly, treading the waters carefully now. "Most everyone else was. However, it is a new facility like I said. They have schools and classrooms for the children to learn in and once the boy is eighteen he would be able to leave for the city. In his case, it is actually the preferable option."

"Why? Why is it preferable than getting adopted, having a family?" Roy snapped a little too rudely.

"Colonel, please understand the boy's state. Though adoptions are higher in younger ages, a child with disability like he has will be at a disadvantage. He wouldn't likely get adopted at all and with his mental state, which you are now saying he is suffering from possible trauma, he will be even less so."

"What percent would you say he has of being adopted?"

"Don't quote me on this, but an educated guess would have to be..... five percent," she told him. Roy felt his heart drop as if it was trampled over by a stampede. He quietly massaged his face in his hands to try and distribute the shock evenly, but it was doing little to ease its sinking in. Edward had almost no hope at all. Roy had worked so hard to get him out of that damn Village just to put the boy in a lonely world without anyone. He groaned to himself angrily. How could he be so stupid to think that problems would just solve themselves like that? That once the hospital was shut down everything would just line themselves perfectly to how they were before? Edward, with either option, was not going to have an ideal life in anyone's standards. It was going to be cold, and it was going to be alone.

"I am sorry sir, but children with disabilities just aren't adopted. If put into the Services he would be given a psychology exam. If he proves to be stable, against your suggestions, he would have a greater chance at finding a family, but not by much. It really would be better for him to go to the Hospital. They would provide a more stable-"

"He is not going to a damn hospital!" Roy retorted impatiently. The specialist froze as he tried to find his thoughts and aline them to words. "I-I can't do that to him. H-he can't go back there. It might not be the same, but it's not that different either. He is almost a genius. He needs a family, a strong school. He needs to be adopted-"

"But it is highly unlikely, Colonel."

"Not impossible-"

"But highly unlikely. He would be stuck in the orphanage for years, possibly his entire child hood watching his other friends being taken to loving homes while he is still there. The orphanage can't provide for a good structured education system, putting him in the local public school. Without having the money to pay for prosthetics of any sort, I doubt he would have a very good time moving about. The New Optain hospital really is the best option," she said making her own very valid point. "I am sorry for putting my opinion into this, Colonel, but you really need to weigh his options."

Roy found his heart stopping. It was Riza originally telling him to weigh his options, but also to weigh Edward's. Roy didn't want to place Edward into another hospital. He felt like that would be wrong, but with such limited resources what choice did he really have? Maybe the hospital would be the best place to put him. As Roy debated this he heard the voice of his subordinate ring in his ears over and over again.

  _I see the smile on his face and... at the same time I see the exact same on your face too._

Roy smiled lightly as he knew this to be true. He hadn't seen it at first, but he did now. Yes, all he wanted to do was to make Edward happy, not just for the boy's sake, but for his. Was it the act of a good Samaritan? He doubted it. He just knew that it would kill him to give the boy anything less. He was the first child that Roy got to know. He was the first boy who he saw smile at him. The boy's eyes were filled with determination, love, and he had limitless potential. Roy smiled when Edward did because seeing the boy's grin really made him happy. However, he could not take in a child like his subordinate had wanted. It was out of the question. He could not be a father especially to Edward. It would have been an irrational decision to keep the kid to himself. Greedy even. Without the proper care, he probably would have ruined any hope of Edward having a good life rather than facilitate it. He needed to give Edward to a family who would feel the same way about Edward as he did and who could help him live the best life he could. Roy would willingly sacrifice his own happiness for that, because of it he knew what he had to do.

…..

Roy yawned as he looked at his watch to find that it was reaching dinner time. He had spent an entire 48 hours dealing with the Heissgart Village nonstop and the only thing that kept him even walking was his autopilot kicking in gear. He sludged his way towards his office in the Eastern Command Center where a mountain of paperwork undoubtedly laid. He would have to take some of it home with him in order to get it done. He walked passed a million of tired faces, each zombies in their own way. He wondered when they would get home again with as much work that was buzzing around due to the incident.

Roy opened the door to the office and shuffled his way in. Riza was standing next to his desk and was stuffing several stacks of papers into a clean manilla folder for him. Her shoulders were slouched and her eyes were sunken but that was the only sign of her tiredness. He made his way over to her and smiled weakly as he stared down at the piles of paperwork.

“I guess with all of this the only way I will ever sleep is when I am dead,” Roy joked weakly as he reached for another stack of papers. However, before his fingers could even touch them, Riza roughly shoved the folder to his chest. The force stung and nearly knocked the wind out of him as his arms flew up to catch a grasp on the folder. His eyes widened as he was caught frozen in her cold hard glare.

“All of this paperwork is due by the end of the week. The rest can wait, sir,” she said stiffly before turning towards her own desk where there was her own coat and bag waiting for her, already packed with paperwork. She was obviously mad but what did he do?

“Hawkeye,” Roy said as he tried to call out to her but she pretended not to hear him as she headed towards the door. He tried again, but she had left him standing alone in the office without another word. He felt as if a hurricane came and went and he had been caught in the middle of it. He didn’t know what he had done to make Riza so angry at him but he knew that if he didn’t chase the storm it would be worse for him in the end. Roy picked up his things and quickly sprinted out of the office to run her down. He called out to her several times, but she only stopped when he called her by her rank.

“Lieutenant,” he breathed heavily as he tried to catch his breath. The woman raised her eyebrow impatiently like she was unamused by his efforts to reach her even though she was standing at attention like anyone would in front of a commanding officer. Her formality was mocking and in this instance, Roy felt embarrassed that he didn’t know why she was angry. The exhaustion ran deep in her eyes as the bags around them were heavy and dark. The tiredness she was feeling made her look ten times as angry than Roy thought she probably was, which was a lot anyways. The last time he saw her she was perfectly fine. Roy then realized, the last time he saw her, she was with Edward.

“Lieutenant, I gave him up for adoption,” he stated even though he was sure she already knew that. “It was either that or give him to another hospital. I know you want me to take him in but I can’t, Hawkeye. I can’t! This is the best option for him.”

“If you believe that, sir,” she replied tartly.

“What do you want me to do? I had two options. I can’t just change my entire life for a kid I met yesterday!” Roy exclaimed. He couldn’t believe he was arguing with his subordinate about this. Why did she expect him to take in a child? It was absurd. He didn’t even know how to parent let alone have the time for one! However, the more he tried to reassure himself of his decision in his head, the weaker his argument became. As he stared into Riza’s angry brown eyes, he now wasn’t even sure of himself.

“Sir, if you love someone, you should be willing to turn your life inside out for them.”

“I can’t connect to someone after one day,” Roy gruffly stated but it was weak and felt sour in his mouth. Riza knew before the words even left his mouth that they were false.

“You know more than I that you are lying to yourself. Everyone can see it plain as day,” she seethed. He eyes were burning with a raging fire and Roy took a small step back knowing that the shame he was feeling was easy fuel. Seeing his submission, Riza took in a deep breath and seemed to relax as she knew that conversation was over and was not going any farther than when they had dragged it. “Sir, I am not going to be in the office tomorrow. I am using one of my sick days. May I be excused?” she asked formally and coldly. It would have been easier for Roy to receive a request from a stranger than her when she was like this. However, he nodded his head, taking a deep breath as he knew he was out from under the gun for now.

“Yes, Lieutenant, you may go. Drive safe,” he said dismissing her.

“You as well.” She spun on her heel and left the Command Center without another word to him. Roy watched her go and felt an overwhelming feeling of regret surge through himself. The Lieutenant was disappointed in him for what he had not been willing to do. The more he told himself that he did the right thing by letting Edward go, the more he felt disappointed in himself as well.


	7. The Biggest Mistake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roy realizes that he had made the biggest mistake in his life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I bet some of you have noticed I posted a lot of chapters on some of my stories recently. I am going away for an entire month and won't be able to write anything so I was excited to post a few more chapters on each of them. I hope you like it and will try and write another when I get back! Have a happy summer!

**_The Cripple_ **

Chapter 7

The Biggest Mistake

 

A loud gut grinding ringing buzzed next to Roy’s ear and startled him from the dark inky blackness of his sleep. He found himself grabbing his heart to steady its erratic frightened beating after he hit the alarm clock into submission. He groaned tiredly as he massaged the sleep out of his face, peeling the last form he was working on off his face where it had been glued with the pressure of his head against his desk and cemented with drool. He didn’t even remember returning home let alone falling asleep but he must have been fairly productive as he had finished half of the paperwork for that week. Hawkeye would have been impressed if she was going to be at work that morning. She was taking the day off to recuperate. Roy, unfortunately, was not. He needed to get back to the Command Center and resume the normal grind of his military career, probably with a lot more coffee.

Roy was still in half of his uniform from the previous day which meant that a shower was in his itinerary for that morning. The grime and dirt from the Heissgart Village felt like it was clinging to him, even though he knew that most of it was spending its time in jail with the rest of the criminals. As quickly as the morning allowed him but as slowly as the clock provided, Roy changed out of his clothes and stood beneath the boiling hot water of his shower. It was such a relief to get clean he almost forgot what it felt like. He wondered how the patients from the Village would feel when they got a shower to clean off. They probably had it by now. It was odd for Roy to not know what was going on in at least one of the patient’s lives at that moment. He had spent and entire few days dealing with their affairs and spending time with them that dropping all contact with them felt wrong. However, this was normal life, he reminded himself. The Heissgart Village was just another job. It was just an unexpected health inspection.

Roy pulled a clean white button-down shirt on and then reached into his closet for his blue uniform to unfortunately find none. He remembered that he was planning on doing laundry the other night when he was supposed to have gotten back from the Village. However, with everything that happened, he was now two days late for it. He had no uniform. Knowing that he did not have time to wash them now, he picked up the uniform pants that he had dropped on the floor and slid them on again. Without any noticeable stain, he doubted anyone would notice he was wearing the same pants he had for the past day. He would have to do laundry that night when he gets back. Roy searched for his uniform jacket but realized that he didn’t remember wearing it when he woke up that morning. Wondering if he had left it at the Village somehow, he suddenly remembered that he unknowingly had given it to Edward. He hadn’t even thought of getting it back from him. That was the lowest priority at the time. There was a small tug at his heartstrings as he realized that Edward was now far away from him in an orphanage. He had already decided that it was the best option for him, but for some reason Roy had the naïve assumption that he would wake up and be able to see the kid again. Roy quickly smashed those false hopes and grabbed another uniform jacket out of his laundry basket. It was missing most of the pins because he didn’t have enough medals to cover every set of uniforms however it still had his rank so he was fine for the day. He would just have to get an extra set to replace the ones he didn’t have. That would take a dent out of his wallet.

The drive to the command center was boring and seemed twice as long as it did the other day. It was the normal route he took but it seemed to be even less exciting than it did every time he made it. By the time he made it into his office, he was sure that he was going to fall asleep. The usual routine happened. Vato called everyone to attention, Roy set them at ease, he grabbed a cup of coffee, and then shuffled his way over to his desk as the rest of his unit continued to rant and banter about their latest silly argument. Roy let out an enormous sigh as he collapsed down into his chair and took a relaxing sip of coffee to get his nerves going. He felt like he was running on fumes.

Just as he was letting himself sink down into his chair there was a nock on the wood of his desk and he looked up to see Heymans standing next to him with a disbelieving look hanging on his face.

“What the hell did you do, Colonel?” the man exclaimed. So much for the start of a quiet day.

“A hello to your commanding officer would be well appreciated,” Roy muttered in retort. Heymans rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest just as his annoyed look was transferred for a cocky smirk.

“Good morning sir, you look like hell warmed over,” he greeted without a care in the world. Roy grunted in retort and opted that coffee was more important than a snarky comeback. Heymans however, planted himself on the edge of his desk, ready to dive into a conversation that Roy knew he would not like.

“As I was saying, what the hell did you do?” the man repeated himself. “You leave for some stupid health inspection, tear down the whole place, make _years’_ worth of paper work, and manage to tick Lieutenant Hawkeye off in the process. What did you do?”

“For your information, Hawkeye, Hughes, Havoc, and I managed to stop abusive monsters of doctors from killing or destroying the lives of thousands of patients in a single health inspection. If you couldn’t tell from the bags under my eyes, it was a long couple of days and I would rather not talk about every excruciatingly graphic detail and finish my paperwork to get these bastards put where they belong,” Roy snipped, his exhaustion getting the better of his patience. He opened the file that he had brought back from home and scooped up the pages he had completed and roughly passed them off to his subordinate. The man whistled in surprise as if seeing him do paperwork was the topping on his cake.  

“Consider it only half a year now,” Roy replied. Heymans took the pile of work from him and deposited it into a new folder he was carrying to get further processed.

“Damn, you really have it out for them.”

“Yeah, well, if you saw the Village, you would know,” Roy muttered before a yawn overtook him. He leaned back in his chair and slouched even farther down into it. Gravity was pulling him under. He knew that Heymans did not visit the Village however he probably heard a million rumors about it. In comparison to Maes, Heymans was the second most aggressive gossip girl Roy knew. It wasn’t because he liked gossip for the sake of gossip, but rather a general curiosity for current events. The most recent event was the Heissgart Village. However, even Heymans seemed to understand that Roy didn’t particularly want to talk about the horrors he had seen at the village. He didn’t think that many other people would either. Instead of prying into the matters of the Village, the man just patted him gently on the back and went into another conversation that Roy didn’t want to talk about even more.

“Okay, I won’t ask. I am just completely amazed at you doing your paperwork for once, sir,” Heymans said without an ounce of pity. Roy glared at him for his quip. “However, I what I am even more amazed about is how horribly you angered Lieutenant Hawkeye! I mean I know you push each other’s buttons but over the last two days you somehow managed to completely piss her off. She has called me twice this morning to make sure you get your work done and has told me some very detailed threats to get you motivated. What the hell did you do?” the man asked. Roy winced as he found out that his argument with Riza was even worse than he had thought. He knew that he had messed up when Riza yelled at him but now she was making sure to ruin his day when she wasn’t even there. If the rest of his men were feeling the affects of her wrath when she was out of the office, he couldn’t imagine what it would be when she returned the next morning. Roy groaned tiredly to himself and massaged his brow tiredly.

“The Lieutenant and I might have had a small disagreement-“ he answered slowly and hesitantly. Any type of small disagreement from him meant that he had messed up big time and Heymans knew it.

“Who is right?” Heymans asked and Roy bit his lip.

“It better be fucking me or I made the biggest mistake in my life.” There was a pause but Roy pointed back towards the lump of files under Heyman’s arm. “Come on, get those done. I didn’t waste my time on them last night so you can waste your time here.”

“Fine,” Heymans groaned as he realized that Roy was not going to give in to all of the juicy details on their argument. “Hawkeye told me to tell you to take the afternoon off only when you get your work done. Since you got a lot of it done last night I think you are good to go. You look like the walking dead.”

“Dealing with the Lieutenant I might as well be the walking dead. But you need to tell the Lieutenant can’t tell me what to do. I outrank her,” Roy sighed.

 “Sir, I think we both know, regardless of rank, she can.”

……

Roy worked in the dull buzz of his office. The pile of papers were quickly shrinking but being replaced even faster with new forms to sign from the Investigations department. The more paperwork he completed the less he felt like he was getting anywhere. He knew he was helping the Heissgart Village every time he signed his name but it still felt pointless when the only thing he was moving around was flimsy pieces of paper. Though a day in the office should have come as a relief being how tired he was from the entire Heissgart event, he felt more restless than before.

Roy yawned tiredly as he set another folder off to the side that he had completed. He reached for his coffee mug and took a sip just to find it unfortunately empty. That was his third cup that morning just to keep him going. Maybe he should just go home like Hawkeye suggested and take a rest. But even the small break from his desk to the coffee pot and back felt too long. He couldn’t imagine going back home and wasting a day.

A deep sigh drained itself from his lungs as he stood up and twisted his back to stretch out a bit. He heard a satisfying pop and grabbed his coffee cup to get another refill for the rest of the morning. Maybe the fourth cup would make him feel better. There were low murmurs amongst his subordinates as he made another trip to the counter. He ignored their small gossip and continued to add copious amounts of sugar to his blackened coffee. They had run out of crème after his second cup of coffee and so he had to resort to taking it with enough sugar to open a candy factory. He wondered if Edward had gotten to eat anything good since he left for the orphanage. Of course he might not have had the opportunity to go to a candy store since funds for the shelter probably could not support it, but maybe he had a good hearty meal. That was probably as good as any amount of sugar to the kid just to get meat on his bones.

Roy found himself smiling and stopped as he shook his head to get the thoughts from his mind. Edward was alright. He knew it. He just shouldn’t worry himself about the child anymore. The small meaningless interaction they had with each other was over. He had more important things to deal with like finishing his work to shut the village down for good. He took a sip of his coffee and winced at how bitter and awful it tasted. He could not picture how half of his unit drank their coffee straight black, especially military grade coffee. It was disgusting. He returned to putting even more sugar in his cup when a heavy hand rested on his shoulder.

“Hey, Mustang, are you okay?” Roy heard the tired voice of Jean said behind him. Though the man got more hours of sleep than he did, Jean looked like he was barely there. He was a walking disaster as if someone had pulled him dead out of the sewers and shocked to life by an Intravenous line of espresso and sugar. Roy was only halfway there though he was considering very carefully what it would take to get a shot of caffeine straight to the veins. Roy only groaned back at him in reply which only made the man laugh. “I feel that.”

“Yeah, you look just as dead as me,” Roy commented as he grabbed a hand full of small sugar packets and walked back to his desk. He figured taking it with him would have made the best use of his time. He sat down, more like dropped, into his desk chair and rolled it closer to his desk. “What’s going on?” he asked his subordinate before taking a large gulp from his coffee. It was half gone when he had set it down. The disgusting taste sent a shiver up his back and he grimaced at the bitter taste. Maybe he really should do an IV.

“Well, I was talking with the other guys and… well we are concerned,” Jean said hesitantly. Roy looked up at him and raised his eyebrow.

“What do you mean?” he questioned though he didn’t feel like the answer was something he wanted to listen to.

“Well, we think you should really take the day off. You have been sitting here cranking out paperwork nonstop for the entire morning-“

“There is a lot of it and it needs to be done, Havoc,” Roy retorted strictly. “I don’t understand where the issue is.”

“Sir, it is concerning because you never do paperwork. Definitely not this efficiently,” he said with a frown. Roy glared at his subordinate. “I was up all-night thinking about… well, you know,” Jean muttered under his breath. He seemed to be ashamed of himself probably because the reason why he couldn’t stop thinking was probably from nightmares. That was probably why Jean looked like a wreck even though he had returned home before Roy. He couldn’t sleep. “If you are still wound up from the village-“

“I am just trying to get my work done Lieutenant. I suggest you do the same,” he growled at him. Jean was taken back and bit his lip. He appeared to want to press him more but decided against it. A small laugh escaped from his lips as he brushed off Roy’s aggravation.

“Well, in that case I was going to head out for some more powerful coffee,” he said softly. “Did you want something?”

“God yes,” Roy huffed. He saw a relieved smile cross his subordinate’s face. Roy stood up and reached into his pocket to pull out his wallet. As his fingers entered his pocket, they brushed against a something soft, bundled up in his handkerchief. He paused. His fingers gently grasped the unexpecting object and pulled it out. Laying in his hand was the small bundle, carefully concealed by the white cloth of his handkerchief. Roy frowned as he stared at it, not remembering how it got into his pocket. He reached out carefully and grabbed the cloth, unfolding it.

 Roy felt his breath get sucked right out of him. His legs gave out and he fell back down into his desk chair, his eyes locked on what he held. Sitting in the palm of his hand was the small green birds nest made out of grass. Roy remembered the huge smile on Edward’s face as he gave him that small little nest that he made with his single hand. It was a treasure and to Roy it was made of gold, but it weighed heavy in his hand and felt even heavier on his heart. Roy closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, holding onto the delicate thing as best as he could.

“Sir?” Jean’s voice echoed through the faze of his mind. Roy almost didn’t register he was talking to him as his mind was locked on the small object in his palm. It was a bit smashed from spending most of its life in the folds of his pocket. The tips of the blades of grass were turning lightly brown but the lush color of the Heissgart lawn was still shining in it. Roy could almost remember the sunny day.

“Sir?” his subordinate repeated. Roy glanced up to see the worried face of his subordinate staring down at him. Roy quickly cleared his throat and sat up, setting the small bundle on his desk as if he was afraid to break it.

“I’m good, I am good,” he grumbled weakly as he reached into his other pocket and pulled out his wallet. He took out a few dollars and handed them to Jean without looking him in the eye. “A large coffee, please.” Jean took the money cautiously and waited for a couple seconds. He seemed to have wanted to say something but chose against it.

“Right,” Jean muttered as he pocketed the money and quietly walked away. Roy’s gaze fell back to the nest and stared at it as the world around him moved. He heard the muffled voices of his subordinates pick up.

“He seems really out of it. This isn’t like him at all,”  Fuery whispered.

“What happened at the Village?” Heymans asked Jean. The man let out a small grumble with a shrug.

“I don’t think  it’s the Village. I think it’s Edward,” Jean replied in a hushed voice. There was a small pause in the quiet conversation.

“Who’s Edward?”

…..

Riza did not talk to him at all that week, aside from what was necessary. She kept her tone overly formal ad criticized his lax behavior with a sharp tongue. Roy was not used to going such a long time without a single words from his second hand. He didn’t know how much longer he would be able to work with her mad at him. He almost wanted to apologize but something was stopping him from doing it. He didn’t know if it was the fact that he didn’t want to claim that he was wrong in his decision or if he didn’t want to admit to himself that he had ruined a child’s life that was stopping him from making up with his subordinate. Either way, he was not giving in.

The clock ticked by even slower than he had originally thought it was. It was late Thursday night, far later than anyone would imagine being stuck in the compound for. Most of his subordinates had gone home aside from Riza who was working diligently on her own papers that needed to get done. Since she had taken off of work earlier that week, she was a bit backed up from all of the paperwork that was flowing relentlessly into their office. Roy, on the other hand, was scrounging for more. He had finished all of his work for that week let alone for the entire month. He was always pouncing on the next paper that came in through the doorway as soon as it hit his desk. But now, he had none and it was late but he still didn’t want to go home.

Roy rested his head on his desk, his eyes fighting the best that they could to stay open. If he fell asleep then it wouldn’t have been the first time that week he had accidentally fallen asleep at work just to wake up to the early risers come through the door. However, he didn’t let his eyes shut as he kept them locked on the small nest that sat delicately on his desk exactly where he had left it when he had found it. As the days went by the grass was quickly losing its shine and turning brown and dry. He had attempted to reshape it back to its original form than the squashed shape it was in after being in his pocket but the grass was crumbly and he did more damage to it than good. It broke his heart to see the nest falling apart. Edward had made it because his favorite animal was a bird. Roy remembered asking him why it was his favorite but he did not get an answer. He regretted not pushing the kid more about it. Maybe then he would have one less question running through his head now about the child.

A sigh escaped him as he glanced up at the clock once more to check the time but the only thing he saw was the blue uniform of Lieutenant Colonel Hughes standing in front of his desk. He did not even notice him come in, which was strange because Maes always announced himself in the most obnoxious way possible. The man stood there with his arms crossed over his chest and a tired frown on his face. It seemed he was about to give a heart to heart lecture like he was always good at. But Roy had enough of those in the passed week he did not want to hear it.

“Shut up, Maes. I am fine,” Roy growled as he turned his eyes back down to his desk. They landed in front of him right on the little nest that was perched there. He closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look at it any longer. He didn’t want those questions running through his head anymore. Maes released a heavy breath as he sat down on the corner of his desk, not caring that Roy did not want him there at that moment. He didn’t want to have this conversation again.

“No you are not Roy,” he argued softly. “You are running yourself into the ground. If you aren’t going to come to terms with what you are avoiding yourself you at least need to see someone about it. Havoc went to a therapist the other day to talk about his nightmares. It has helped him significantly-“

“Good for him. I don’t have nightmares.”

“Roy, I am not playing this game with you again. Everyone deals with their stress differently and you know what you are doing to yourself. At least one of your subordinates tell you this once a day. You need to stop.”

“I am getting work done-“

“And it is done!” Maes exclaimed as he pointed down to Roy’s empty desk. “There is none left for this week, possibly the next! You can’t sit here for the rest of your life waiting on more forms to come in.”

“I have to. I have to make sure that the Village is shut down. I have to make sure that the kids get to the right place. I have to make sure that they are okay, Maes! I don’t care if I am working myself to death over it. I need to make sure he is okay!” Roy yelled at him. Maes raised his eyebrow at his retort, not even flinching at the ferocity of it. His friend was tired of his arguments.

“He,” Maes stated flatly, “as in Edward.” Roy bit his lip and turned his gaze downward to the ground.

“I didn’t mean to say that,” he grumbled but he wasn’t fooling anyone. Of course he did. He had been scanning each document that went over his desk for days just looking for any sign of his name or patient ID. He needed to know if he had made it to the orphanage alright or not. He needed to make sure that the boy was alright.

“We both know you did.” There was a length of silence that spun through the office. Roy could hear his subordinate scratch away at her own paperwork and he deeply wished it were his own. If he was working, he wouldn’t be having this argument for the tenth time with his best friend. If he was working, he wouldn’t have to think of anything at all. He could shove the world away and focus on signing his name on every damned page the Village had sent him. He could pretend that all of his troubles didn’t exist. But Maes was right. He was shoving the world away for too long and it was coming back with a punch of its own. As much as he wanted to keep fighting it, Roy had to relent.

“I don’t know what’s happening, Maes. I don’t know what to do,” Roy whispered in disbelief to himself. “He’s only a kid. Why am I so worried about him? There were thousands of children and other patients there. Why am I so worried about Edward?”

“Roy, you connected with Edward which is amazing on it’s own because…. Well, let’s just say you aren’t the epitome of fun,” Maes replied. Roy glared at him but did not argue, letting the man speak. “I think after spending time with him, you didn’t want to let him go. Now that you did, you are finding out you can’t care for him in the same way you did for those two days and saturating every outlet to make sure he is alright.”

“But why?” Roy begged the man for an answer. “There is no reason for it!” Maes let out an exasperbted  sigh like he couldn’t believe he didn’t understand already and looked Roy dead in the face.   

“You want to be a father,” he stated.

“I can’t! I don’t have the room or the time or the means-“

“Roy, dig past all of your excuses, everything you expected of yourself previously and find what you actually want to do. If you find that you really do want to look after Edward you should be willing to make a change for him. If not, then there really is no reason to be worrying about a silly little kid you spent less than two days with.”

Roy frowned and looked back to the delicate lump of grass on his desk. How could he be a father of someone he only knew for two days? Why was he so protective of a child he barely even knew? He didn’t even know why Edward liked birds so much, or his favorite color. It was too absurd of an idea for him to get up out of the blue and adopt a little kid for no logical reason. He didn’t have the space! He worked long hours. He couldn’t do it!

But Maes was right. He was a Colonel, his pay was very good. If he wanted to he could support a larger family and still be well off let alone a single kid. He also had a decent sized townhouse with a guest bedroom. He had kept it for the occasional overnight guest but he hadn’t had anyone over in years that didn’t already live right in town. That room could easily be a kid’s bedroom. It was the perfect size. As for time, though the military was taxing job he usually worked from 8 to 5 which were normal work hours for any civilian job. He knew plenty of single mom soldiers in the building who did their job with three kids. Everything that he was telling himself really was just an excuse.

Roy dropped his head into his hands and held it there. The silence that his friend had given him to think was suffocating. He couldn’t even hear Hawkeye working with how hard his mind was spinning. He wanted to be left alone for a little while just to sit down and think by himself. It was too important of a question to just answer right off the bat. He needed to think about it. Seeming to understand his stress, Maes let out a tired breath and reached into his pocket. As Roy was sorting out his crisis, two small pieces of paper fell infront of him on his desk. They were photographs.

“I went to get my film developed from my camera. Aside from having wonderful pictures of my pregnant wife I found these amongst the bunch. `Since they’re of you I figured you might like them,” Maes told him before turning and walking away. “Tell me when you sorted this out. So I know when I can start bugging you about something else.”

The door closed as his friend left but Roy did not watch him leave. His eyes were stuck on the couple of photographs in front of him. Yes, they were of him. They were taken when he had returned to the Command Center after the Heissgart Village. He remembered Riza telling him that Jean had stolen Maes’ camera to clip some photos of him. But while the photos were of him, they were also of Edward. After the long days at the Village they had spent the majority of the time waiting in the in processing tents to get Edward to his appropriate home. They had been exhausted but Roy had held high hopes that Edward would find his way back to his family. The picture was of Roy passed out on the cot after the long health inspection with Edward curled up beside him with his uniform jacket draped over him. They looked peaceful just sleeping there as both probably dreamed about the inevitable reunion to his family. Roy now knew how naïve he had been.

A shaky breath raked through his lungs as Roy closed his eyes and pushed the pictures farther up on his desk next to the small pile of grass he had kept. His eyes felt hot and he tried to distract himself in any way to avoid crying. He had done too much of it these last few days. He didn’t want to make a habit. However, the ticking of the clock seemed to have stopped, so did Riza’s pen scratching on paper. There was nothing in front of him to do. He had to face the facts and stop running even if he didn’t want to come to the conclusion he knew was approaching all along.

“Lieutenant,” he breathed just barely loud enough for his subordinate to hear, “I think I made the biggest mistake in my life.”

“Glad you finally figured it out, sir.”


	8. The Solution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roy fixes things

**_The Cripple_ **

Chapter 8

The Solution

 

Roy stood outside of a large complex located near the outskirts of town. It was gated with a rough iron fence surrounded by an underkept garden over taken by weeds. The building itself was nearly as impressive as the fence surrounding it. It was made of cinderblock walls probably due to cheap budgeting as cheaper materials would have allowed for a larger complex. To make up for the rough exterior, the cement blocks were painted over in nice friendly colors. The paint was peeling in some sections but covered up by varying chalk pieces that some young child must have drawn. By the appearance of the building itself, Roy would have assumed it was a school of some sort. However, a small insignificant plaque mounted to the iron bars of the fence said “East City Orphanage” in faded gold letters. This was where Edward was.

Over the next week after Roy had realized what he had done he had endlessly bugged Maes for any information on Edward’ whereabouts. The Investigations unit was a lot larger than Roy’s own was and more in tuned to the happenings of the Village. Maes was able to pinpoint which Child Services agent was processing Edward’s information and get in touch with her. That had lead Roy to the front steps of the Orphanage two weeks later. When Roy had found out how much paperwork was involved in adopting a child he almost shat a brick. He was able to get his background checks pretty easily being in the military but everything else was still in the process. He estimated that if he worked as diligently on getting this paperwork done as he had the other week at work, he would be able to officially adopt Edward in four months. To him, that seemed too long.

Roy opened the small gate and stepped through into the green yard of the home. Hundreds of children of varying ages were playing outside on the grass. Kickballs flew around the yard as the older kids were in the middle of a game while the younger ones were sitting in a circle in the shade of the building, making small rings of flowers. Roy walked through the yard towards the building looking around as the children slowly stopped their games as they caught sight of him. Roy had come right from work and was still in his uniform. It seemed to be a shock to the kids as they saw a military officer on the premises of their home. Roy felt himself grow nervous as hundreds of eyes were set on him, none of which were Edward’s. He quickly ran up the steps of the building and ducked inside the large wooden doors.

The inside of the building was far more inviting than the outside. Along the walls hung various drawings that the children had drawn. Crayon and marker pictures created a rainbow of colors through the hallways which were brightly reflected in the waxed checker tiled floors. Roy took a small minute to observe some of the drawings that were taped to the walls. They had the child’s name and age on the bottom of them. He was sad to see some of the kids had multiple pictures from the different years they were there. He saw one name reoccurring ten times since the child was 5 years old. From the last picture the kid would have been a teenager and still in the home waiting to be adopted.

Roy sighed tiredly as he stood up from where he was bent over looking at the pictures and raked his fingers through his hair. When he was young he himself had nearly avoided going to this same orphanage. After his parents had died in the house fire, it was by the grace of his Aunt that he was taken in to an actual loving home. Though it was not the most ideal childhood to grow up above a rather ratty bar on the west side of town, looking back he knew it was good for him. He was looked after by his aunt and many young women who both knew how to empower him and put him in his place at the same time. If he had gone to the orphanage instead, he did not know if he would have grown up the same man. He did not know if he would have had his own place to call home at all.

A sudden cough caught Roy off guard and he turned around to see a rather short man standing behind him. He was pale with squinty eyes and a slim mustache to match. If Roy had seen him on the streets he would have labeled him a conman by the small clever smile that hung on his face. Unlike most of the children who seemed to have very basic clothes walking in, the man in front of him now wore a crip clean business suit which only emphasized Roy’s impression of him. However, Roy had to rationalize.  If he worked in the home, he must have just been a man with some form of generosity in him no matter how small.

“My name is Yoki,” the man said in a rather squeaky voice announced. “I look after the Orphanage here. Who may you be?”

“I am Roy Mustang. I am looking to adopt a kid from here,” Roy answered. The dark eyes on the man’s face brightened and his grin grew wider. He clasped his hands together eagerly.

“Very well, what a wonderful day indeed! I could show you around the home if you want, call all of the children together so you could meet all of them-“

“No. No. It’s fine. I- uh, am looking for someone specific,” Roy elaborated quickly just as it looked like Yoki was about to call all of the children together. He did not want to disturb the children from their play but furthermore did not want all of those hundreds of children to stare at him again. “An Edward Elric? I had knowledge that he was here, but have not seen him as of yet.”

“Let me see,” the man grinned as he motioned for Roy to follow him. He shuffled his way back into the depths of the building towards a door labeled office with a small golden sign. Roy thought nothing of the office from the outside, but on the inside he felt like he had stepped into another world. Where the hallways of the home seemed standard, the office was luxurious and filled with beautiful antique furniture and fine dining plates. Roy’s eyes widened at the near instant transition of his surroundings. There was no way that a man of his income could have afforded furnishings such as what was in the office.

There was a steaming porcelain cup of tea sitting on the mahogany desk waiting to be drank. Yoki delicately took the leather cushioned seat behind the desk and drew a long sip from his steaming cup of earl grey. A small sigh escaped his lips before he turned towards one of the larger filing cabinets in the office and started to sort through it. Manila folders filled the cabinet each labeled with a child’s name, assumedly those still in the orphanage now. After a small search Yoki found a file stuffed in the bottom drawer of the cabinet all the way in the back. He pulled it out and set it gently on the desk. He took another sip of tea before flipping the file open and looking through it.

“Edward Elric you said?” he asked as he pulled out a photograph that was clipped to the file. Roy took it gently in his fingers as the man handed it to him to look at. The picture was of Edward probably right after the Child Services got custody over him. It was taken specifically for his adoption file though Roy doubted it would help any parent willing to adopt him. He was still in the scrubs that he was given, no bath, and bone thin in front of a plain white background. Roy found his heart breaking as he could still see the red tear tracks on the kid’s face after his departure from Central Command. Roy bit his lip and looked away shamefully. Yoki took the picture back from him.

“Yes, that’s him,” he replied. Yoki let out a disappointed hum as if he did not agree in Roy’s choice.

“We only got a couple kids from that hospital, whatever the hell went on there. We are at max capacity here. It’s a good thing too. Those urchins are driving all of my volunteers to the edge,” the man grumbled his distaste into his cup of tea. Roy felt his anger spark in him but he kept quiet. Getting on the bad side of the supervisor here would only make the adoption process harder if not unachievable. Yoki cozied down into his chair and delicately set his cup down on its matching saucer. He was a man who held himself above the filth of the world. Roy thought it was quite the opposite.

 The man sighed with a small smug smile and continued, “I will just have you know that he has only been here for a few weeks and has already got a bad reputation for fighting. He won’t eat, he won’t play with the other kids. I would say you, a working man, are definitely better off with someone else. There are plenty of other children who are not as big of a handful this little urchin-“

“I would like to adopt Edward,” Roy snipped tartly. Yoki grimaced unamused and closed the file in front of him. It was obvious that the man held great distaste for Roy’s decision but he was smart and kept his discouragement quiet from there on.

“Very well. If you would like to meet him, he usually is upstairs in the small library and doesn’t go out of it much aside from coming down for meals,” the man informed him. Yoki made no move to want to show him where the library was. He simply said ‘down the hall 3rd floor on the right’ and left it at that. For this, Roy was both offended and relieved. He gave short curt words of gratitude and returned into the hallways of the weathered home.

Roy took his small walk as an opportunity to look around at the place that Edward had been staying for the last few weeks. It was large and definitely had a lot of room for the kids to run both outside and inside should weather permit. Large bay bedrooms were lined with neatly made beds with quilts and pillows for each child. Bathrooms were scattered down every hallway and by the smell of bleach and chemicals, Roy assumed they were kept clean biweekly.

As he was observing the building Roy found his feet came out from under himself and he collapsed to the cold tile floor in a world of curses forgetting that there might be children present to hear them. A whirling noise came from behind him and he looked back towards his tangled feet to see a small little wind up robot making its rounds after getting its gears kicked by Roy’s large foot. It appeared that the orphanage even had plenty of toys which Roy was finding himself grateful for but his scuffed knees were not. Edward was living in a place where, not optimal in society’s standards, was a complete improvement in everything that the Village had lacked. Roy was glad to see that his excessive worrying over the last few weeks was not needed.

After poking his heads into a few different rooms Roy finally found the door to the library. He would have found it sooner if he noticed the sign, but it was well worn from years of poor maintenance and the green paint that made it had peeled away. Butterflies tickled the inside of Roy’s chest and he faltered outside with his hand on the door knob. All of the worry that he had built up over the past few weeks hit him like a freight train. He desperately wanted to see Edward. He could be right beyond this door and all he had to do was walk in. However, Roy never wondered if Edward actually wanted to see him in return. He had left the kid crying after a weak goodbye and had sent him away with no good explanation. What if he didn’t want to see him again? Roy’s heart fell and he closed his eyes. He took in a deep breath to steady himself. There was only one way to find out and that was to open the door.

The library could barely even qualify as a book shelf. The room was coated in shelving meant for books but only had several thick layers of dust from lack of care. There were a few books on one of the closer shelves but Roy saw that they were torn and drawn in with various colored crayons. Even then, they were children’s books which proved no challenge to read even for the most basic learner.  

As the door swung open all of the way Roy heard a soft sniffling that disrupted the silence of the room. He took a few steps in to see a young rememberable figure sitting by himself on the floor by one of the large book cases. It was Edward. He was wearing clothes, but Roy didn’t know if they would qualify as such or rather as tapestries. They were too big and hung off him at every angle. A huge pair of kaki shorts was held onto his small skeletal form by only a single large belt which tail end trailed off him by a foot. All of that extra fabric made the kid look even smaller than he did at the Village which had Roy concerned. Not as concerned though to the fact that he had walked in on the kid crying.

Roy’s heart shattered as he watched Edward sob to himself. He was curled up with his only leg pulled up to his chest and his head buried into his only arm. The kid whimpered silently to himself probably expecting to be alone there in the library. Roy wanted to rush over and hug the kid to let him know it was alright, but he restrained himself. He didn’t know if that would just make it worse. After all, he was the one who did this to him. He had sent him away right when he promised to find his home. Roy had sent him to the orphanage without something as little as a goodbye. Roy did not know what the kid was crying about, but he still felt guilty for it all the same. Edward would not be here if it weren’t for him. Roy hesitantly stood in the doorway unsure of what to do until he heard another sniffle come out of Edward and he had to speak up.

“What are you crying about?” Roy asked quietly, hoping not to startle the kid. Edward blindly shook his buried head and continued to sob. However, his tiny hand tightened protectively around a piece of cloth that Roy did not notice he had earlier. He still couldn’t see it very well but from the looks of it, it appeared to be a blanket of some sort.

“Th-they broke it,” the kid cried, his voice muffled as he spoke down into his arm.

“Ripped it?” Roy asked as he took a few steps closer to Edward and knelt down next to him. He wanted to get a better look at what he was holding but unfortunately the kid was curled tight around it to protect it from farther harm. “Let me have a look-“

“Noooooo,” Edward whined as he gripped the object he was holding tighter. “It’s mine.” Roy sighed as he looked down at him as the boy continued to sob quietly to himself. He needed to fix this.

“Edward,” he said softly. The kid froze stiff at the sound of his name. “I can fix it if you will let me.” There was a small gasp as the kid finally recognized his voice and his head snapped towards him, golden eyes wide in shock. The kid stared at him in disbelief and Roy smiled gently. He didn’t know what Edward’s reaction would be so instead of trying to anticipate it, he waited.

Edward’s face distorted into an ugly grimace as he closed his puffy red eyes and let out a strangled sob. He seemed to have run out of tears a long time ago, the tracks staining his flush red cheeks, but he was not done crying. Edward quickly buried his head into the cloth he was holding previously and continued to sob louder. Roy finally saw that it wasn’t a blanket or a toy but rather his military jacket that he had wrapped around Edward at the Village. It was the first piece of clothes that the kid probably had in at least two years. Even after everything Roy did, Edward still had it. That alone felt like a sucker punch to Roy’s heart and he found his own vision clouding with growing tears.

“Edward,” Roy gasped as he pulled the crying kid closer to him. Edward did not fight him. Instead, he turned and hugged him back. Even with only one tiny arm, it was the strongest hug Roy had felt in his entire life. It only made Roy cry harder in both joy and guilt.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Roy wheezed as he held Edward tightly in his arms.

“You left,” Edward hiccupped as he pressed his tear stained face into Roy’s shoulder. His voice was muffled in his jacket, but Roy heard it all the same. “Why does everyone leave?”

“I know, and I am sorry. I should have stayed. I should have stayed with you,” Roy told him. He regretted his decision with his entire being and he felt that pain down in the bottom of his heart. He left the kid alone. After everyone else in his life abandoned him, Roy left the kid too. “I’m sorry. I won’t let you be alone anymore. I’m sorry. I am going to fix it, Edward. I am going to fix all this, alright?” Edward didn’t say anything. He only cried harder and nodded his head into Roy’s shoulder. Roy rocked the kid gently, hoping to soothe him even in the slightest. In all honesty it calmed him too. The kid’s chest spasmed with every hiccup the crying had caused. But as Roy continued to rock him, Edward’s tense muscles relaxed and soon the world was silent.

“If you would let me,” Roy said, his voice out of place in the new found silence, “I would like to adopt you.” Golden eye's lifted to look at him as Edward pulled back for a second. They were red and blood shot from crying but they were frozen in shock. The kid's jaw dropped in disbelief. Roy smiled as the boy tried to absorb what he was trying to explain to him.

"Y-you... y-you...," Edward stuttered trying to find the words to come out of his mouth. Roy nodded his head and suddenly the boy was gripping him for dear life in his one-armed hug. His blond head was pressed so hard into Roy’s chest he thought his sternum would break. Roy looked down in surprise to see Edward staring quizically out into the blue as if he was trying to put everything into words, or into one particular emotion. The boy was delightedly confused. He bit his lip trying to hold back another round of tears.

"Th-tha- thankyou," the boy choked out, his voice catching slightly. “Thankyou thankyou thankyou,” he repeated over and over again. Roy smiled and patted the boy on the back, not really knowing what to do. He wasn't expecting the kid to be this happy, or rather relieved.

 "I-I can stay?" he asked to make sure this wasn’t some cruel trick that Roy had made up. “With you?”

“After I get all of the paperwork in you can come home with me. Until then I will come as much as possible to visit you. It might be a while but will you hang in there?” Roy questioned. Edward furiously nodded his head and buried his head into Roy’s arms again. Roy could feel a small smile press itself into him and he felt a similar one mirror it on his own face.

They sat there like that for a while, just hugging each other and letting their emotions settle into a respectable calm. Edward was happy and Roy felt redeemed in some form or another. The kid didn’t hate him for leaving him there even though anyone rightfully should have been. It seemed that even Edward had hope that things would get better. Roy had made the biggest mistake of his life giving Edward up at the Command Center. Now, hopefully he could give Edward the life he deserved at home with him.

After a few minutes of quiet Roy gently reached out and picked up the ripped jacket that Edward was holding previously. The color was faded from years of use Roy had put it through before giving it to Edward. The pins were still haphazardly placed on there and the buttons were sewn tight. The damage the kid was upset about was in the seam of the right sleeve. It appeared to be torn like someone had tugged too hard on it and ripped it. Edward spun around in Roy’s lap so he was sitting in it and reached his small hand up to touch the dark fabric.

“Sorry I broke your jacket,” Edward mumbled.

“It’s your jacket, if you want it, Edward. We can sew it up and make it like brand new,” Roy said as he inspected the seam. He had wanted to complain a few weeks ago about not having all of the pins to his uniform but now he didn’t care. The huge smile that came over Edward’s face as he heard the news and that alone was worth it the extra money Roy had to spend on a new set. Edward bounced up and down excitedly in Roy’s lap ready to fix his new jacket right up.

Roy set Edward on the floor and leaned over to where Edward’s crutch was tossed haphazardly to the side. It was old and beaten as the kid must have gotten it from the orphanage closet. A lot of kids probably got hurt in their time so having a spare crutch in the building was common. He handed it to Edward who fumbled to stand with it. It was a bit too tall for him but not unmanageable. Though Edward had probably been using it for at least a few weeks now he was still wobbly on it. Roy didn’t know if it was because of lack of coordination or because Edward didn’t have strong enough endurance to keep up with moving around all day. Either way, Roy stayed right by the kid’s side to catch him if he tipped over.

With the worn jacket folded over Roy’s arm, the two of them made their way towards the arts and crafts room that Roy remembered seeing on his small tour through the building. He had hoped that the orphanage would have some sewing supplies in there incase any of the children were to lose a button off their shirt or tear a hole in their pants from rough housing. He didn’t think that they would mind if they used some.

 There were not many kids inside the room since most were outside playing in the nice weather. There were only about three kids who were being watched over by a young volunteer who was showing them how to use glitter to make birthday cards. Roy was amazed at her talent with kids because with how messy he new glitter to be, there wasn’t a single speck on the floor.

When Edward caught sight of the woman a huge smile spread across his face and he quickly hobbled over to her.

“Rose!” Edward exclaimed as he went but unfortunately it only caused a distraction. Edward’s crutch got caught on a loose floorboard and he instantly went down with a clatter. Both Roy and the woman let out their own gasps and raced towards where the kid face planted into the floor. Roy got there first and quickly hauled the kid up into a sitting position so that he could look him over. However, his worry was in vain. Edward did not have a scratch on even his pride and he was still smiling bright as day after his fumble.

“Rose!” he chanted again towards the young girl. The teenager let out a small chuckle at the kid’s excitement and opened her arms to give him a large hug. Edward eagerly took it.

“Edward! You need to be more careful you silly goose. I thought you were going to stay in the library today,” she said.

“The Colonel came!” he giggled. Rose looked up to Roy in surprise and a confused smile appeared on her face as her alert eyes studied Roy for the first time. Strangely, she seemed on guard as she caught sight of his uniform and Roy knew that she instantly decided not to like him. However, Edward was unaware that she did not share the same oppinion he did about his friend.

“So, he did,” she said cheerfully though the happiness did not reach her dark eyes. She grabbed the crutch from the floor and handed it back to Edward who took it as an invitation to stand up. “Hey, Edward why don’t you go over and make Adam a birthday card? You know he would be very happy to have one-“

“But we are gonna fix my jacket,” the kid pouted as he pointed back towards the bundle of cloth Roy was still holding.

“I just have to talk to the Colonel for a little bit. When we are done we can fix your jacket so its brand new. Okay? But while we are talking how about you make a card. It isn’t everyday someone has a birthday,” she told him. Edward whined to himself but made no farther protest as he hobbled over to the table where the other kids were working, this time more careful about the floorboards. Roy smiled as he watched Edward take a seat and start to pull out various craft material to start his project. However, his grin did not last long when he caught sight of the scowling teenager in front of him. With out a word she walked passed him into the hallway and motioned for him to follow. Roy didn’t know what he did wrong now, but he could tell that the girl was not going to let him off easy.

“Who the hell are you?” she whispered harshly immediately after Roy closed the door behind him.

“Colonel Roy Mustang-“

“Edward talks about a Colonel all the time but don’t you think for one second I don’t know what you did! What do you want with Edward? You aren’t here to take him back are you? I will report you for child abuse if you do! I swear it-“

“Child abuse? What?” Roy balked at the girl’s accusations.

“Moderate malnourishment, incorrectly healed surgeries, scars, a long list of phobias, may I go on? If you think this is proper parenting I am here to tell you it is not! I won’t let that young boy hang around a man who would care so little about his wellbeing!” she scolded him though Roy finally realized her anger was misdirected.

“Ma’am, I think you are confused. I did not do any of those things to him. I found him in the Heissgart Village on a routine inspection. It is what lead to its shut down,” Roy explained to her. He told her about how he didn’t know Edward until about a month ago and how he had found him in such a horrible place. At his words the fury was quickly doused, and her eyes widened in shock. It seemed that she didn’t know where Edward had come from or how he had ended up in the orphanage. With the newspapers printing a vast number of stories on the horrors within the Village after the news had leaked out about the evacuation, Roy thought she would have at least made a few connections. She had good intentions after noticing the signs of neglect Edward bore but unfortunately without all the information, her case would have been wasted if she decided to try and turn Roy in as a child abuser.

“The Heissgart Village? He was really there? You mean you aren’t related to him?” she mumbled and Roy shook his head no. “I-I am sorry, he just talked about a Colonel like he was his father or uncle or something. I thought that you were-“ 

“No, I am not, but I appreciate your concern for him. He really needs someone looking out for him,” he told her. She turned pink at that whether it was out of embarrassment of her mistake or pride of her compliment. Roy expected a bit of both.

“Well, if you aren’t here to take Edward, what are you here for?”

“No, you were right. I am getting my papers together for his adoption and I thought that I would pay him a visit though it might be another few months until everything is sorted out. I didn’t leave him on a very good note when I left and I apologize for it.”

“You are adopting Edward?” Rose gasped in disbelief. A hopeful smile spread across her face. “Oh this is wonderful! Everyone had their doubts about him getting adopted. They said he was too scrawny, and that he couldn’t play sports like everyone else, and that he got into too many fights, but I just knew. I said within the month there will be someone here that would want to adopt him. He’s too nice and smart not to be loved.”

“He gets into fights?” Roy asked her, thinking that it had to be a lie. There was no way that Edward would purposefully hurt someone else. The girl bit her lip as she hesitated on an answer.

“I don’t think he starts them. Some of the kids here pick on him. I try to stop it when I can, but I don’t work everyday with school and everything. That’s why he usually stays up in the Library. If someone is bothering him, he will go there. It seems to make him feel better even though he has already read all of the books. No one really is up there to disturb him,” she told him “I was amazed when he came down because he usually stays up there the entire day, even with nothing to do. I bring him his meals and try to comfort him, but there is only so much I can do with all the other kids I have to look after. He must really like you to have left the library. You must have really made an impact on him.”

“I have only known him for a few days now. I don’t know how that happened,” Roy chuckled lightly, “but I can say that he’s definitely made an impact on me too.” Rose smiled at that.

They didn’t talk too long since there were little kids left on their own on the other side of the door with glitter and craft supplies. They could only imagine the mess if they were left unattended. Roy opened the door back into the craft room and found himself frozen in the doorway, gawking at the mess that was created in only ten minutes time. All of the other kids were complaining loudly as they were picking glitter off their faces from where the little tub had exploded. Finger paints were cracked open and smeared on various papers and glue was in the mix as well. In the center of it all sat Edward who was completely covered in any craft supplies one could think of. Glitter and paint was smeared up his one arm and across his shirt and chest where he had probably leaned across his work to grab something. There was a red hand print across his face where he had rested his head to ponder his next artistic masterpiece. Edward had managed to make the 9th level of hell out of construction paper and string.

“Oh my god,” Roy breathed as he covered his mouth in shock. Rose gasped as she stepped around him and caught sight of the chaos.

“Oh no! Edward!” she yelped as she rushed forward and lifted the boy away from the craft table that used to be so clean. She pulled him over to the sink area and quickly grabbed several wet paper towels to begin wiping him off with.

“I painted a picture!” Edward cheered, lifting up the masterpiece he brought with him. It was three blobs of paint smashed onto black construction paper. One red, two blue. Roy couldn’t imagine what it could have been.

“What is it?” The instant Roy asked it he realized that he had made a mistake. Edward looked broken hearted that he couldn’t tell what he had made and Rose looked like he had just committed blasphemy. Instantly, he tried to redeem himself.

“Oh, I see!” Roy took back as he pretended to examine the picture a bit more than he originally had even though he still didn’t know what it could have been. “And what does the artist have to say about his painting? I want to know what he was thinking about when he made such a beautiful work of art.” Edward’s smile split across is face and reached from ear to ear even as Rose continued to scrub at it to get the gaudy red paint off of it. She gave him an accepting nod of the head which let Roy know he had avoided hell.

“That’s me,” Edward said pointing to the red blob which Roy noticed now was smaller than the rest of them. He guessed that it had some threads coming out of it that resembled hands but it might have just been a trick of the light. “That’s you, and that’s bird lady.”

“Lieutenant Hawkeye?” Roy asked, trying his hardest to hold in his laughter when Edward nodded his head. If Riza heard that he called her bird lady, she would murder the kid right then and there. Riza did not do well with nicknames. Now that Roy looked at the blob that was designated as his subordinate he could see the small spikes of her bun coming off the top of the portion that resembled a head.

“It looks exactly like her,” Roy commented knowing that if his subordinate was there, he would be killed instantly. “Why don’t you label the picture so that everyone else knows who we are?”

“Okay!” Edward chirped as he tried to make his way back to the craft table but Rose held him still. She was still trying to clean him up from his mess and did not want him repeating the experience. She quickly reached behind her where there was a box of crayons waiting to be sorted and pulled out a white one and handed it to him.

“Here you go, Edward,” she said as she got the last of the red paint off of his face though she knew his clothes were too far gone to help. Rose picked Edward up and quickly sat him down at one of the smaller plastic tables at the side of the room so that he could finish his project. Edward quickly got busy with labeling the picture as Rose and Roy watched.

“Well, it isn’t a birthday card but it’s something,” Roy muttered earning a small laugh from Rose.

“I didn’t expect him to make a card anyways. Adam’s the other volunteer, my boyfriend, and Edward never met him yet. He’s off helping with the church at a youth bible camp,” she said. “Now, about that jacket he was talking about?”

“Oh right,” Roy exclaimed as he almost forgot the whole reason why they were in the craft room to begin with. He pulled the jacket out from over his arm where he had tucked it and held it up. “I was hoping that you had some thread and a needle I could use. It’s only a split seam. Shouldn’t take too much time.”

“Oh, yes. Needle and thread are held in the closet over there so that the little kids don’t poke into them. Feel free to help yourself.”

With that, Roy walked over to the closet as Rose returned to the other kids who were complaining about the mess at the table. He sifted through the drawers until he found one spool of dark navy thread that almost ran out and a needle. Hoping that there was enough to work with he took it and returned back to where Edward was sitting. The kid had the whole picture labeled already and was working on another masterpiece luckily only using crayons and white paper as the medium. Roy took a small glance at the painting that he did and saw that he had in fact labeled it exactly how he had said he would. The words Kernel, Bird Lade and me were scribbled in atrocious handwriting on the bottom with white crayon. Roy grinned stupidly at it not knowing why it made him so happy to look at a simple picture.

Needing to sit down, Roy scrunched down into the other pink plastic chair that was set around the tiny table. Though it was the perfect size for Edward, Roy’s knees were pressed up to his chest though not uncomfortably. He pulled out the fabric, threaded the needle, and quickly began work on the jacket’s torn sleeve. Most people did not expect a male soldier to know how to sew. On the contrary, most everyone in Roy’s unit knew how to do a simple patch job if needed. Uniforms were expensive and getting them altered or dressed was even more so. Not wanting to pay to get his new rank or awards sewn on whenever he got promoted, Roy took a few days to teach himself how to sew since his initial entry training into the military academy. He was not the best, but a split seam on a uniform he knew like the back of his hand was nothing to worry about.

It took about five minutes, during which Edward managed to finish his newest drawing. Roy wanted to say that the crayons made it look better, but it didn’t. The lines were all crooked and jagged and the people half formed. Roy picked up the trail of thread, tied it off and cut it before holding up his work to see. Edward was instantly by his side and with one quick motion snatched the jacket out of his grasp and wiggled into it. It was much too big for him but definitely looked a lot better around his shoulders than wrapped around him for decency. The sleeves fell over his hands and the fabric swamped his small skeletal frame. Only having one arm through the sleeves meant that without it buttoned, it was falling right off his shoulders. Edward turned back to Roy and beamed up at him, his smile bright as day.

“I am you!” Edward exclaimed making Roy laugh as the jacket fell off of him.

“Not quite,” he chuckled and buttoned up the jacket for him. Though the right sleeve still hung empty, the jacket now stayed on. “There you go.”  Edward cheered as he used his crutch to hobble on over to Rose to show her his new jacket. The kid, in his excitement, dropped his most recent drawing on the floor. Roy sighed as he bent down and picked it up for him, setting it back down on the tiny table.

“Sir,” a stern voice said next to him, making him jump out of his skin. Roy turned toward the door to see Lieutenant Hawkeye standing there, still in her matching blue uniform like him.

He wanted to ask how she knew where he was but instead what came out was, “What are you doing here?” Any other person would have rolled their eyes like it was obvious, but she just gave him a straight look that told him he was being oblivious.

“Sir, some more papers for the adoption process came in. Background checks and everything were approved. You had them sent to the office again. Do I have to remind you once more that you do not live at work and have your own mailbox ten feet outside of your house.”

“I gave them my address. I don’t know why they sent them there,” Roy grumbled his innocence. He took the stack of papers that Riza handed him and flipped through them. He had the luxury of receiving the checks nearly three times as fast as anyone else because of his status in the military. Since they have regular background checks working for the state, it was a much quicker process to receive his. Now that he had his copies, all he had to do was send them into his child services representative and hopefully go onto the next excruciatingly long step. He wanted to thank his subordinate for running these to him as soon as they came in but froze when he saw the look she was giving him. There was more.

“What else happened?” he asked, masking the concern in his voice for curiosity.

“Madame Christmas called,” Riza admitted. “She is furious that you are adopting a grand-nephew without telling her and demands you meet her for dinner at the bar tonight.” Roy cursed and Riza reprimanded him with a slap over the head. They were, after all, in the presence of children. Roy held his aching head but thanked Riza for catching him. He did not want to be in the habit of cursing in front of Edward no matter how bad his mouth was at work.

“It won’t be too bad, sir,” Riza said as she began to eye the drawings left out on the table. “She just wants to know what is going on.”

“She has wanted grand kids forever. She is going to talk my ear off all night and complain that I’m not married and that I won’t do it right.”

“There are bets going around the office on whether you are going to turn into Lieutenant Colonel Hughes or not once you adopted Edward,” she told him as she picked up Edward’s painting.

“And what do you say?” Roy asked, hoping that his most trusted subordinate would at least imagine him to hold some decency in parenthood. He had been trying to keep his adoption secret from most of his unit until he felt like they needed to know. It seemed that they now all knew and he was going to be getting an earful the next day at work. As much as Riza was poking fun of him now, he hoped that when it came to Edward, she would put the rest of his unit in check. Looking at the painting, Riza’s lips turned downward as she caught sight of her name written in white crayon on the bottom of the page. She set the painting down on the short table and straightened herself out.

“I put twenty dollars down that you would be worse.” Roy felt his pride shatter as he glared at his subordinate for her bluntness. “If anyone else in the office but Edward starts to call me bird lady, consider yourself unofficially demoted.”

“But I outrank you,” Roy reminded her for what felt like the millionth time in his career. She struck him with a deadly glare.

“Keep telling yourself that, sir.”


End file.
